Life crawling towards normalcy for Bihar labourers
Patna, Aug 30 (IANS) Suraj Kumar, a native of Vaishali was a part of the group comprising eight persons that arrived at the Jai Prakash Narayan International airport here to catch a flight to national capital Delhi.
During an interaction with IANS on Saturday, he said that his employer has sent air tickets to group members to reach Delhi to resume their work that was on a pause due to the coronavirus-triggered crisis.
“Our group specialises in marble installation in under-construction residential as well as commercial buildings. Our contractor needed our services since Unlock period began in Delhi. As selected trains are currently operational, our employer sent air tickets as well as three months’ advance salary before re-appointment,” Suraj said.
His colleague Ram Mahto said, “it was a painful experience for us when the lockdown was imposed in late March”.
“We had walked 35 km to reach Anand Vihar bus terminal in Delhi. Then we somehow managed to board a UP roadways bus bound to Lucknow. After waiting there for three days, we decided to walk 650 km… through Gorakhpur, Chapra and other districts to reach our native place in Vaishali,” Mahto said.
“We have started looking for a job since the first Unlock period was announced in June. We have visited cities like Patna and Muzaffarpur in expectation of some job. We are ready to work as labourers despite being skilled in marble installations but no one has given jobs,” Mahto said.
“We are lucky that our employer contacted us and provided air tickets. We are not in a position to buy flight tickets costing around Rs 6,500 per person,” said another person Sunil Kumar.
“We are skilled in mushroom farming and our employer wants us. He has given us air tickets,” said Vinod Sharma, a labourer. “I would be travelling on an air plane for the first time,” he added.
Pappan Singh Gahlot, another mushroom farmer in Tigi Pur village in the outer district of Delhi is one of the farmers who has provided flight tickets to his labourers.
“I have 3 acres of land which I have been using for mushroom farming. It required skilled labourers,” he said.
Migrant labourers of Bihar returning to other states like Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, Gujarat, Maharashtra have now become a poll issue for the state’s opposition parties.
Tejashvi Yadav, the Leader of Opposition and younger son of RJD chief Lalu Prasad, slammed the Nitish Kumar government for his failure on job creation.
Jan Adhikar Party chief Pappu Yadav also criticised the JDU-BJP combine government on the same issue on Friday.
–IANS
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