NEW DELHI: Workers from the denotified tribes faced a worsening of conditions in terms of wages, safety, and other conditions between July and September amid the Covid-19 pandemic, showed the data collated by the National Alliance Group for Denotified, Semi-Nomadic and Nomadic tribes and PRAXIS. Of the 471 workers interviewed, 32 per cent reported a decline in their wages. While 29 per cent said there was a poorer safety net at their jobs, 30 per cent reported an overall deterioration of their work conditions.
The highest number of workers interviewed was from Madhya Pradesh at 96, followed by Tamil Nadu at 85. Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Manipur, Odisha, and Uttarakhand are the other states where workers were interviewed. Access to education among children belonging to denotified tribes remained poor between July to September, showed data collected from 217 locations across Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Chattisgarh, Uttarakhand, Delhi, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Telangana. Of the 217 locations, over 69 per cent reported that children did not have access to online education, and children in 61 per cent locations did not have access not offline education.
When it comes to having access to additional rations, people in over 20 per cent of the places did not receive them between July to September. According to the Renke Commission report submitted in 2008, at least 23 per cent of the denotified communities surveyed had reported their families were in debt and 23 per cent of denotified tribes reported availability of BPL cards. It had also reiterated that denotified tribes constitute the most socially and economically backward sections of the population.