HYDERABAD: Taking a serious view of the failure of brick-kiln owners in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh to deposit migrant workers’ wages in their bank accounts, a division bench of the High Court has directed both the state governments to take action against erring owners of brick kilns and to submit action taken report to the court.
The bench, comprising acting chief justice Dilip B Bhosale and justice P Naveen Rao, gave this direction on a taken-up PIL case remitted from the Supreme Court. When the Supreme Court was told about the pathetic conditions of migrant labourers in Odisha and the erstwhile united Andhra Pradesh state, it took up the case and sent it to the Odisha and Hyderabad High Courts for adjudication.
On an earlier occasion, the bench felt that workers were not getting the money promised to them by brick kiln owners and ordered the two state governments to take steps for opening of bank accounts for the labour and to ensure that the owners paid wages to them through bank in order to have accountability.
During the course of hearing, the bench told the government counsels that the opening of bank accounts was not the criterion but was to be seen whether the brick kiln owners were depositing the wages directly into the accounts of the labour or not. In reply, the counsels said that some owners were depositing the wages in the bank accounts of labour.
Not satisfied with the reply, the bench, while pointing out that only some owners were depositing wages in the bank accounts of the labour, asked about the action initiated against the erring owners. Issuance of notices to them would not solve the problem but action needed to be taken against the erring owners, the bench observed.
While adjourning the matter to July 4 for further hearing, the bench directed the government counsels to submit action-taken reports.