Migrant workers from Odisha, who migrate to other States in search of their livelihood and mostly land themselves in brick kilns, face numerous difficulties in their destination areas.
While on the one hand, they get less wage, on the other, they are not enrolled with any Government schemes. The migrant women face marginalisation as women, as members of different socio- economic class, caste and finally as workers.
Every year after the harvest festival of Nuakhai in western Odisha, Gayatri Thappa and her husband Sumanta Thappa pack their luggage to go to neighbouring State Andhra Pradesh to work in a brick kiln site.
They are among other hundreds of people of their small village Budhapalli in Bolangir district. “We are landless and every year we need to migrate to the brick kilns of neighbouring States to work as labourers, otherwise we will starve,” says the 19- year-old Gayatri.
The entire family migrates to a brick kiln in Andhra Pradesh except her grandmother in-law. Even the small children also accompany their parents to work.
The work in brick kiln is too hard. The agent before sending the family to the destination places bargains these women as associate labour or as assistant of their husbands in brick kilns. But in reality, the work participation of these women is equal with their husbands. Besides, they have no escape from household chores like cooking, cleaning and taking care of children.
At brick kilns, while men engage in brick making works, women equally participate in other works like sun-dry raw bricks, head-load it to furnace, break coal and sometimes help in preparing dough. Some women even do the brick making work. Gayatri who joined her husband after their marriage three years ago, has been helping him in all these works and this has led to her miscarriages in previous years.
When this year she got to know about her pregnancy, she discussed and convinced her husband that she would stay back in the village with her grandmother in-law till her delivery. Her husband also agreed with her decision because he knows in previous years how she was going through pain and was working hard without rest.
“In brick kilns, the supervisor always keeps a vigil on what we do. If he will see that I am resting and not helping at worksite, he will shout at us and cut our payments,” she explains, adding, “The labour is so hard and tedious that it badly affects our health.”
Every year more than 3 lakh migrant workers from this western side of the State, along with their family members, migrate to neighbouring States of Andhra Pradesh, Telengana, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu to work in brick kilns.
A few of them come to the outskirts of Bhubaneswar city, where more than 100 brick kilns are operating. The sample data collected by Civil Society Organisation, Aide et Action, reveals every year the number of migrants revolves between 2.5 lakh to 3 lakh.
An activist working in Bolangir district says because these people go through agents or middlemen, they never reveal the exact number of the migrants. There is a nexus between the agents, money lenders and brick kiln owners, and the sufferers are the migrants.
A visit to the brick kilns gives a detail idea how migrant women workers are suffering from various health hazards. Most of the pregnant women at worksite do not get proper health check up, as they do not have information about nearby health centers and also no ASHA (Accredited Social Health Activist) worker visits the worksites.
“Brick kilns are situated far away from locality and being outsiders these women workers do not get access to Anganwadi centers. long working hours, poor working conditions and an absence of basic facilities like toilets, safe drinking water and no crèche or rest room for them, make their condition more vulnerable,” says programme officer, MiRC, Aide et Action, Saroj Barik.
The organisation is working on migration issues in four States, including Odisha. Bimala Batra (19) of Kanakot village in Nabarangpur district helps her husband at a brick kiln worksite at Bhubaneswar. She along with her husband has come to work in the kiln since last December with other group of migrant workers from their village. When she came, she was two months pregnant, but after a few weeks she could not continue working so hard, like to head load 1,000 bricks daily.
“We work here to head load the bricks to chimney (furnace) to arrange them for firing and every day each migrant worker has to head load more than one thousand bricks. When my husband approached the supervisor to permit me for resting whenever I feel nausea and head reeling, he was reluctant and did not allow,” says Bimala adding, “But when my husband said he will share my work the supervisor agreed.”
But Bimala is not enrolled in State Government’s welfare scheme for pregnant women. She says, “I heard about the partial wage compensation scheme for pregnant women. If I would be staying at my village, I would have been enrolled in Mamata scheme and get THR (take home rations) under ICDS programme.”
A study on migration and maternal healthcare access explains, migrant women particularly recent migrants are at the risk of not receiving adequate maternal healthcare. It is necessary to understand the existing picture of reproductive healthcare access to migrants in order to develop migrant-sensitive strategies for improvement of maternal health. Maternal health indicators are poorer among migrants than natives.
The marginalisation of women workers starts from food distribution within the family which affects their health immensely. Due to hard work and consumption of low grade rice, the migrant women suffer from stomach related ailments very frequently. It affects the pregnant women to a great extent.
“Hard work results in frequent fever and poor health condition, which increases the incidences of maternal mortality rate and low birth weight children. Even the pregnant women do not get any ANC facilities such as iron tablets and maternity care at their work place,” said Rukmini Panda from Odisha Consultant for Aajeevika Bureau. “If the pregnant and lactating women and children will be served with cooked food, it will help improve their health condition to a large extent,” she suggests.
The women who join their husbands and work as bonded labourer, their condition is more vulnerable than other migrants. Sabitri Jani (22) was among those 14 families who were rescued from a brick kiln factory in Tamil Nadu in 2014. These families were working as bonded labourers for years. Sabitri and her husband Hemanta Jani were one among them. During those periods they were deprived of proper food, rest and any health facilities.
A quack who had accompanied them to Tamil Nadu used to give her some medicines. That resulted severe health problem. “Also to avoid scolding from supervisor and loss of wages I started working before fully recovering from sickness as we have to complete the target. We were bonded labourers and were unknown about the place, language and people. And the major problem was lack of money. Even if I was suffering my husband could not take me to any hospital,” says Sabitri with moist eyes.
Here people migrate due to multifarious reasons but primarily as an escape mechanism from poverty, indebtedness, droughts and non availability of work. This migration occurs as a survival strategy and not a step for better livelihood options.
There is distress in the migration too as the working conditions in the work site are no better. long working hours, meager payment, no healthcare facilities, no PDS facilities at destination place affect the migrants negatively. Among them, the condition of women and children are more vulnerable. To include this migrant population in various welfare schemes, especially in healthcare services, disaggregated data are needed to understand their problems.
“Most of them do not have any knowledge about their rights when they migrate to other states. Besides, poverty, language problem and unknown at the destination place, these vulnerable group do not have a voice to raise the issue,” says Sanjay Mishra, an activist working in Balangir district.
“To include these invisible groups in various schemes and policies, the Government should focus on tracking of migrant people, particularly women and children both at source and destination places,” opines Umi Daniel of Aide et Action.