The Boden police of Nuapada district rescued 36 migrant labourers from a bus near village Khaira of Boden block when a local labour contractor was trying to transport them to the Kantabanji railway station on Tuesday evening.
“Getting information from some people, our police team followed the bus and intercepted it near Khaira. The labour contractor fled from the scene, but the labourers, including eleven children, were rescued,” said Boden PS IIC Srikanta Barik.
The District labor officer and his staffs reached Boden on Friday morning and made arrangements for sending the labourers back to their respective villages.
“The labourers belong to Khorla, Daneibasa and Bagbahal villages of Boden block. The contractor was sending them to Hyderabad brick kilns. It is unfortunate that five of the rescued children were child labourers,” said the DlO Mustabal Naik. “We also had rescued 22 labourers a day before,” added he.
The labourers said, “The contractor had paid our wage in advance at the rate of Rs 8,000 each. He had not paid anything for the children, but we had to take them because we needed their help during brick making to achieve the given targets.”
The DlO revealed that the contractor Narendra Singh Thakur has a licence for taking eight labourers, “provided he submitted the names and other details of the labourers including the place of destination,” clarified the DlO. “The contractor had neither submitted the names nor obtained any permission from our office for the movement of labourers in the present case,” he added.
Notably, labour migration has already started from the month of November in Nuapada district, and thousands of labourers have already left their villages. They are being rescued only in a very few cases,” said Khirasindhu Sagaria, a human rights activist.