Jammu and Kashmir National Conference on Monday decried the insensibility of the government towards the plight of migrant workers saying the pandemic induced lockdown coupled with government apathy has pushed them to unimaginable hardships.
While expressing dismay over the failure of GOI to assuage the countrywide distress faced by migrant workers, party’ senior leader and former Member of Parliament Sharief Ud Din Shariq said, “With no money in hand, many such workers are walking back to their homes with nothing more than bottle of water and stale bread for a solitary meal a day. Unfortunately center has shown alacrity in coming to the rescue of poor with no understanding and consideration for country’s workforce, whose lives are devoured while motoring the growth and development of the country.
Contrary to helping the stranded migrant workers reach their homes, many state governments under pressure from the local builders and industrialists are stopping them to go back to their places. Caught between devil and deep sea, the situation of workers is wretched. All their petty savings have exasperated thus making it difficult for them to have a decent square meal. They have no access to proper sanitation and health facilities. The problems faced by their families in view of discontinuance of remittances, they used to send, has also overburdened the already aggravated lot. Amidst all this government is as usual serving them mere catch-words as recompense. At many places the workers are coerced to start work in industries without ensuring their safety in view of the prevailing COVID-19 crises, which is far from coming to an end.”
He said the center has overburdened the states by abdicating the responsibility of coordinating their safe return to their home states. “As a result of government whimsicality, millions of impoverished working class countrymen are walking, cycling, dangerously hitch-hiking to their native areas. It is a tragedy and shames how the people at the helm of affairs are behaving with regard to workers; Most of these workers are being denied their impending wages. The measures announced by the government to ease out the hardship of migrant workers: organized, unorganized and casual laborers is no less than a hodgepodge,” he said.
Rather than sitting on piles of food grains government should have open the gates of its FCI granaries for their hapless people, he said adding, “Government should without delay address the woes of the stranded migrant workers, who unfortunately are suffering of inadequate ration, liquid cash and accidents. Immediate cash doled out to these hapless workers will help them overcome the hardships. Besides that solving the migrant crises should not be relegated to states only, center which commands railways can do a great deal of work by fetching these wretched workers to their native places.”
Shariq Urged the JK administration to ramp up its efforts to fetch all the laborers back to their natives places by using all possible resources at their disposal. He sought effective help of the center in this regard as well.
