A workers’ camp at Kilkattalai wears a deserted look as migrants have gone to their native to celebrate Holi | Ashwin Prasath
CHENNAI: The team of officials from Bihar led by IAS officer, D Balamurugan, on Tuesday indicated that they are satisfied with the safety of workers from Bihar in Tamil Nadu and that no worker from the north Indian state said they faced problems in TN.
“We have interacted with workers from Bihar living in Coimbatore, Tirupur, and Chennai. No one has told us that they faced problems,” D Balamurugan, secretary of the rural development department, Bihar government told reporters at the secretariat after holding detailed discussions with Chief Secretary V Irai Anbu, Public Secretary D Jagannathan, Home Secretary K Phanindra Reddy, and other senior officials.
“Videos of incidents that took place in Jodhpur and Hyderabad were spread as if they took place in TN. Similarly, another video pertaining to an incident in Coimbatore which has no connection with Bihar workers was also doing the rounds. Due to the confidence-building measures taken by both the state governments, the panic among the workers has started subsiding,” Balamurugan said.
Balamurugan said the Bihar team arrived in Chennai on Saturday and met the senior police officials and then the Chennai collector, labour commissioner, the state’s public secretary, and representatives of industry associations and Bihar associations here. On Sunday, they held similar meetings with Tirupur officials.
Meanwhile, DMK parliamentary board leader TR Baalu called on Bihar CM Nitish Kumar at Patna and handed over the detailed statement given by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin on how the migrant workers are living peacefully in the state.
Teams from Bihar and Jharkhand met the migrant workers across the state after a disinformation campaign launched by miscreants on social media, alleging attacks on north Indian migrant workers. The migrant workers as well as various associations from Bihar and Jharkhand stated that the working conditions of the migrant workers is good in Tamil Nadu and also the contents published in social media and the press in Bihar were fake, a Labour department release stated.
