Migrant workers from States like Bihar and West Bengal are being subjected to rampant exploitation in Kerala, if recent reports are to be believed. It is an irony that this inhuman practice is taking place just when stories abound about the bad treatment Keralite workers are receiving from their employers in West Asian countries like Iraq and Oman.
Reports on exploitation of workers from West Bengal simultaneously point to the failure of the CPI(M)-led left Front which ruled that State for over three decades and the present Trinamool Congress Government in improving the living conditions of the poor and the hypocrisy of Keralites who refuse to provide others what they demand for themselves.
The major methods of exploitation to which workers from other States are subjected to in Kerala are underpayment, overwork and denial of facilities promised to them while inviting them to work in the State. The State Government, which has been claiming to be taking steps to ensure labour security to migrant workers, is allegedly doing nothing worthwhile in this regard.
The latest story of this exploitation came out after the police detained a group of migrant workers and their families from West Bengal at the Kozhikode railway station last weekend. The police had detained the group following suspicions of human trafficking and efforts to push the children with them into child labour.
The agent who had brought them to Kerala to engage in work in the construction sector said that each worker was being paid Rs500 a day for the normal eight-hour work. However, the workers said that they were brought on the condition that each would be paid Rs5,000 a month and the contract was for two-month periods.
"We were brought by an agent. We don't know much about work contract and such things. We have been told that we would have to work for up to 13 hours a day," said Vijay Mishra, one of the 23 men in the group of 48 from Malda district of West Bengal. The group had 15 women and ten children belonging to different age groups.
Moti Rahman, the Bengali agent who had brought the workers to Kerala, for the construction of the hostel building of the National Institute of Technology of Kozhikode, said each worker would be paid Rs500 a day. But the migrants told the police that they were brought on the condition that each would be paid Rs10,000 for two months.
"It shows how inhuman certain people can get," said a CITU leader. "In the first place, you won't get Keralites to work at construction sites for the wage of Rs500 a day. And the maximum work time is strictly eight hours. It is up to the Government here to ensure that justifiable working conditions and wages are provided to migrant workers," he said.
But the fact is that this does not happen almost anywhere in Kerala. Kishore Yadav, a worker from Bihar engaged in a brick kiln off Thrissur says he is being paid Rs350 per day but he works for almost 11 hours. "Apart from that, watching the kiln and surroundings at night is also my job as I am staying at the site but that is free work," he says.
Since assuming office in May, 2011, the Congress-led UDF Government in Kerala has declared at least four times its plan to implement a registration programme for migrant workers with the goal of ensuring their welfare. The labour Department had said that the migrant workers' registration would be completed by September last but this has not happened so far.