BERHAMPUR: In the midst of Ganjam’s grim battle against Covid-19, migrant workers who returned home after the lockdown was imposed have begun their move back to their workplaces.During the last four days, over a hundred have left for Surat and Chennai right in the midst of a complete shutdown across the district. Sources said the return journey started last Friday when a group of 27 left Seragada in a bus to Surat via Jharsuguda.
On Monday, another group of 30 from Khalikote left their native in a bus to Chennai. “The workers were engaged in a company called Catagan operating out of Chennai and last week, the management sent funds. Another 37 migrant workers of Aska and Polasara also left in a bus for Surat. Even now, many mill agents are camping with permission for return of migrant workers from rural areas of Ganjam,” sources said.
Over three lakh people from Bhanjanagar sub-divison in Ganjam were engaged in different mills of Surat and around 70 per cent of them returned when the mills closed due to lockdown. After completing their quarantine and home isolation, they remained idle. Their earnings exhausted and absence of substantial work has triggered their outward migration again.
Though the Ganjam administration provided employment under MGNERGS, most returnees were not interested in menial works. Meanwhile, spinning mills in Surat opened and agents reached the rural areas, persuading the workers to return. Armed with permission for return issued by the Surat administration, they are also luring the workers with advance payments.
Interestingly, the Ganjam administration, busy with the Covid battle and shutdown enforcement, has not been able to stop the migrants who left without informing block office or local police. The details of the permission issued by Surat administration are not even verified. It is not known if those migrating have been tested or not.
While the administration has been tightlipped about it, some of migrant workers, on conditions of anonymity, said they were being encouraged to return to Surat as early as possible. “We were promised work but never provided as most of the job cards are ghost cards,” said one worker.
However, social workers say migrants returning without proper registration will once again be denied rights under labour laws meant for them at their workplaces. Inter-State migrant workers are to be registered through licensed labour contractors but almost all Odia migrant workers from Ganjam find employment via informal networks. Sources say just about 8,000 migrant workers are registered with Labour Department’s offices in Berhampur and Chhatrapur in Ganjam district.
Lokanath Mishra, convener of Link Workers’ Scheme, a project for Odia migrant workers, said hundreds of small and medium scale textile units in Surat engage migrants of Ganjam to operate power looms. These units dodge the Inter-State Migrant Workmen Act by showing that they employ less than 10 persons.
“Because of absence of registration, the Gujarat Government recently informed the Gujarat High Court that it was committed to pay its share of return travel fare for only 7,512 out of a total 22.5 lakh migrant workers from other states, including Odisha, citing the Inter-State Migrant Workers Act,” said State secretary of the Communist Party of India-Marxist, Ali Kishor Patnaik.
Social activists say brokers of Surat’s mill owners operate in the rural areas of Ganjam for a commission which must be checked.