Amid reports of migrant workers walking down to their villages due to lockdown in the Country BJP legislative party leader Babulal Marandi has urged the State Government to help them reach their villages. The BJP legislative party leader said that he is pained seeing thousands of migrant labourers stranded in various parts of cities.
“I am pained at seeing thousands of migrant labourers from the State standard at different parts of country. These people are facing difficult times as they neither have food nor accommodation. They are poor people and it is our duty to help them," said Marandi.
He further said, “When so many people from the State are stranded at different parts of country we can send aircrafts to get them back. Everyone wants to stay with their families during such time of crisis. We must help them and I urged the State government to take a quick action in this connection."
The senior BJP leader in this connection has written a letter to Chief Minister Hemant Soren and State Labour resource Minister Satyanand Bhokta to airlift labourers. Marandi has also urged the State government to send different teams of senior government officials to different parts of country where migrant labourers are stranded. According to Marandi labourers from the State go to Surat, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Jaipur, Gaziabad and other cities in search of bread and butter.
The Jharkhand government has set up control rooms, through which these labourers’ contact tracing is being done. The state government, along with several NGOs and civil societies, has tried to reach out to these labourers. Moreover public representatives such as MPs, MLAs are also receiving phone calls from migrant labourers. Marandi's letter to Chief Minister assumes importance as recently CPI-ML MLA from Bagodar Vinod Singh has tried to draw the attention of State government towards labourers woe’s. Singh targeting MPs from Bihar and Jharkhand has said that these two states have 54 MPs, but none of them have taken any initiative to help out migrant labourers. Singh giving reference from a newspaper report has highlighted that a MP from Andhra Pradesh has helped 1000 labourers in reaching homes from Varanasi.
As Prime Minister Narendra Modi has extended the 21-day lockdown upto May 3 these migrant labourers problem is going to escalate in coming days. Sources said that as many as 75 per cent of labourers have already lost one to three weeks of work. The loss of income is proving to be catastrophic on several fronts. Most of the migrant labourers and daily wage earners fear they will run out of food before the end of lockdown on May 3. Moreover many also worry that they will not be able to find work once the lockdown ends. The Centre and State government has tried to lessen the pains of the migrants during the pandemic.