The plights of cobblers, barbers and tailors are simply incomprehensible in the second phase of the lockdown. Sources said these lots are just forgotten lot.
Sources said the Ministry of Home Affairs has given leeway to plumbers, electricians, fishmongers, mutton chicken sellers, now book sellers, electric fans sellers etc in this lockdown but is conspicuously silent on the hardships of cobblers barbers and tailors.Palamu MP V D Ram said, “It is time that smaller trade people like barbers, tailors and cobblers etc may also be given some freedom to start their earning but with all care and caution of social distancing and personal hygiene.”
A civil society activist Akhtar Zama said, “Few days back a DC of a district of Jharkhand was shown doing haircut of her hubby, which was most religiously carried by some esteemed newspapers as if it was the most essential of duties that the lady DC was performing.”
Zama said our heart goes out to daily wagers like road side shoe menders, barbers, tailors, khomcha wala whose sufferings just are not noticed either by State government or by MHA as well. He said milk & vegetable sellers are luckier tradesmen but not these as two of these trades cobblers and barbers come invariably from Dalit community.Zama has urged MHA to include self-employment tradesmen in ease of curbs like plumbers and electricians. He said the barbers must take all precautions like sanitized scissors, sanitized towels, sterilized shaving brush etc for hair cut or shaving as in USA if reports are to be believed than a large number of coronavirus infections spread from saloons of the barbers there in that country.
Sources said these people used to earn their living a day by working across the streets like the shoe menders who used to sit on the pavements repairing or polishing shoes etc but with the lock down a shoe maker is all without work, wages too.Similar is the fate of the barbers who in happier times used to do many works like hair cutting, shampooning, hair do, shaving, body massage etc. Village barbers have had their own way like asking customers to sit on a brick and then his head used to have hair cut or a total shaving etc. Sources said some rich people run saloons for men and women here where barbers used to work on contract. These saloons are equally shut.No less miserable is the life of the tailors who are more pathetic as assistants in their tailoring shops too are jobless.
Secretary, State Disaster Management department Amitabh Kaushal, when asked if thee tradesmen like cobblers, barbers and tailors can have ease of curbs to eke out their living a day, said, “The State government strictly follows the guidelines of Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and beyond this nothing doing. MHA guidelines are our only code of business.”