NEW DELHI: Over 60 per cent of migrant workers did not know of the emergency relief measures provided by the Centre and state governments, shows a rapid assessment survey on the impact of COVID-19 lockdown conducted by NGO Jan Sahas Foundation.
As part of the report ‘Voices of the Invisible Citizens’, 3,196 migrant workers were telephonically interviewed between March 27 to March 29.
The report documents that 62 per cent of the interviewees did not know the emergency welfare measures and 37 per cent of them did not know how to access the schemes.
Most of the migrant workers interviewed in the survey were male. The maximum number of workers interviewed were from Madhya Pradesh (at 68 per cent), followed by Uttar Pradesh and Delhi-NCR region.
Ashif Shaikh, the founder of Jan Sahas, said, “There need to be coordinated efforts by the Centre, state governments, civil society organisations and any other philanthropic work being conducted for the migrant workers during the lockdown period. The Centre should take the lead in coordinating with the states in order to ensure that there is parity in the economic relief measures being announced, the report has recommended.”
While 55 per cent of the workers in the study said they earned between Rs 200 to Rs 400 daily and had an average family of four to support, 42 per cent of the workers said they had little to no ration on the day of the survey.
Thirty three per cent of the respondents said they were stuck in cities due to the lockdown with little or no access to food, water and money.