GUWAHATI: For 200 families of tea garden labourers in Tripura, trader Sujit Deb emerged as their saviour on Saturday.
The 41-year-old distributed 5 kg rice, 500 gram dal and a soap each to the families which hail from a tea estate falling under Mayachari Gram Panchayat in Dhalai district.
In the aftermath of the nationwide lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the tea estate had shut down its operations leaving the labourers, who are daily wagers, at their wits' end. They got very little to eat in the past few days.
“I have a small business and my family members are not faced with any food scarcity. But there are many people, like these tea labourers, who have nothing to eat now. When I learnt about their plight, I made up my mind that I will do something for them. They were very happy to have received the relief,” Deb, a poultry wholesaler, told this newspaper.
The 200 families have a combined population of around 1,000. During the lockdown, they can do nothing to eke out a living.
On Saturday, Deb travelled around 5 km from his house at No 2 Kalachuri village in a vehicle, carrying the relief materials, to reach out to the people. He distributed the essential items in coordination with the district administration.
“I spent Rs 45,000 in buying the items. It was my hard-earned money,” the soft-spoken trader said.
He said he was suffering huge losses in his business ever since the outbreak of COVID-19 in India.
“Initially, most people stopped eating chicken for the fear that it carries the virus. Then, we have this lockdown that has kept people indoors. The volume of my daily sales before COVID-19 was over Rs.1 lakh. It has plummeted to around Rs.10,000 now. The traders in the poultry business have been affected very badly,” he added.