Kolkata: The West Bengal government has decided to launch a large-scale outreach drive in states like Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Kerala and Karnataka to get more migrant workers from Bengal registered on the state’s Karmasathi portal, which was launched as part of an effort to offer better opportunity to people leaving the state in search of jobs and livelihood.
The initiative was taken after it was noticed that only about 34 per cent of the estimated migrant labourers had registered their names on the portal through the recently organised drive titled Duare Sarkar (government at doorstep), said sources at Nabanna, the state secretariat.
“We have a record of around 41 lakh migrant labourers who had returned to Bengal during the nationwide lockdown in the wake of Covid 19 outbreak in 2020. The majority of them were brought back by the state government and rest returned on their own. But the portal through Duare Sarkar camps held between September 1 and 30, registered names of only 13.60 lakh migrant workers,” said an official at Nabanna.
Citing an example, the officer said the number of migrant labourers who returned from Gujarat during lockdown was 4,69,069 but only 59,218 of them registered themselves on the portal.
“The details of the outreach drive in other states will soon be finalised. We may set up help desks in other states with migrant workers to help them get registered with the portal,” the official said, adding, “The success of such a drive depends on the registration of the migrant labourers on the portal.”
According to the state secretariat, the total figure of current migrant workers might increase or decrease now since the state government initiated some measures to give jobs in Bengal and at the same time, some more people left the state in search of livelihood.
“The government’s target is reducing the number of migrant workers heading for other states. For this, we need to know the present number of such workers to prepare a database so that the government can think of offering them better deals in the state,” said another official of the state government.
Sources in the Trinamool Congress said the aim of the outreach drive and offer migrant workers better deal in Bengal are to blunt the opposition parties’ political tool on the issue of joblessness in the state citing the figure of migrant labourers working in other states.