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Bring migrants back with better incentives, salaries and guaranteed accommodation, say HT Chandigarh readers
This is the time to review welfare policies for migrants and daily wage workers and guarantee them decent wages, education for their children, healthcare facilities and comfortable lodgings close to their workplace. The onus should also be on their employers to set aside certain percentages from their profits for their welfare, say readers
Clear all their dues and salaries
The migrants are suffering tremendously due to the Covid-19 lockdown. In order to help them, everyone, especially the industrialists and administrations, have to ensure that all their dues and salaries, even for days not worked, are cleared. Any medical or financial help needed by them should be provided. They should also be tested for Covid-19 free of cost and leave for treatment should be with pay.
Saikrit Gulati
Let large-hearted Punjabis show others the way
All administrations at various levels in different states and union territories should draw up a comprehensive master plan of paying bonuses to all daily wage/migrant workers to secure their future. Funds for their welfare should be spent from the Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund (PM CARES Fund) especially created for controlling Covid-19 in India. Farmers and industrialists should come forward voluntarily to contribute to the fund. This would be real acknowledgment of the services provided by these daily wage/migrant workers to the farming or industrial sectors. In this respect, people of the state of Punjab, famed for their proverbial magnanimity, must come forward with a large-hearted initiative to show the way to the industrialists and the administrations. This would be a valuable lesson in national unity, humaneness, and social camaraderie.
DR SS Bhatti, Chandigarh
Make poor aware of welfare schemes
The government should ensure that industries offer full wages to labourers to enable them to provide food and shelter to their families. The poor should be made aware of the benefits they can enjoy under various welfare schemes. To sum up, no migrant should go to bed hungry without a roof over his or her head in a welfare state.
Usha Verma, Chandigarh
Major stimulus package needed
Steps by farmers, industrialists, local administration to secure the future of migrants and daily wage workers will yield little without a major stimulus package by the government to protect their interests and that of their employers. Prioritising halting of the exodus and workers’ return and rehabilitation can salvage the situation.
Lalit Bharadwaj, Panchkula
Mandatory savings a must
The migrant story has been one of the biggest learnings of the Covid-19 pandemic. These are the people who build our cities, huge structures, keep our economy growing. Their lot has been the worst. The onus is now on the governments to ensure not just a minimum wage of more than Rs 20,000 for them, but also make sure the people hiring them guarantee the education of their children and provide them accommodation with adequate cooling, ventilation and hygiene. Most of them should be given financial advice and asked to put their savings in a bank mandatorily. Educating each worker to not have more children will also ensure population control. After one project finishes the contractor hiring them will also have to guarantee them work in other projects.
Tejeshwar
Provide them with work and food
The government should make every effort to ensure the workers stay put where they are and ensure their employers provide them work and food. Full salaries should also be paid to them during the entire duration of the lockdown. Industrialists, farmers and contractors, who hire them for work, should look after them like their own family members for these people have supported them when they needed them. Giving them advance payment, or a loan or gift to go back home or survive in this lean period can also help.
Sumesh Kumar Badhwar, Mohali
Supports for migrants vital
The first priority of the government should be to instil confidence in the migrants and daily wage workers by effectively supporting and feeding them till the return of normalcy, and persuade them to stay wherever they are. Focus must be on restarting construction and transportation activities, giving a fillip to industrial growth, and other miscellaneous services to ensure they get jobs.
SC Luthra, Chandigarh
Complete exodus will lead to catastrophe
A complete exodus of migrants will lead to catastrophe that will have a rippling effect on the entire economy of the nation. Their movement out of towns and cities spells total failure of the Central government in taking care of their needs. An exercise to make an estimate of their needs before the lockdown would have worked out. It can be done now.
DP Gautam
Welfare of workers crucial
The government’s orders that migrants have to be housed within industrial premises if they are called in to work should be followed strictly with regular checks by authorities. Sanitised, cool rooms, clean toilets, bedding, hygienic food, every possible comfort for the workers should be ensured by the industrialists. The moneyed have no problems splurging on expensive cars and homes, so feeding the people who labour for them, making sure they are comfortable, should not be a problem. In fact, the industrialists should be proud to help improve the lifestyles of these people. They should also set aside certain percentages from their profits for their welfare.
Richa Khullar, Chandigarh
Guarantee workers’ right to a dignified life
The migrants and daily wage workers have to be treated with trust and compassion and for that the government must embrace the new “politics of responsibility,” guaranteeing their safe and healthy survival and an economically secure future. They have remained at the socio-economic margins of our society, silently supporting urban economies and languishing in invisibility. This crisis has made them visible so the time is ripe for the state to exercise its true responsibility of guaranteeing their right to a dignified life. To devise policies and provide services for seasonal migrant workers, the state needs to have a realistic statistical account of their number and an understanding of the nature of their mobility. The challenges are still complex and have to be fully addressed. They have to be provided work security, income and health facilities as well as clean and comfortable shelter. Pension policies also have to be created for them. Unless we view migrant workers as a dynamic part of a changing India, we will not be able to solve the problem of urbanisation.
Vijay Malia, Chandigarh
Social security, good income should be prioritised
The trauma that the migrants and daily wage labourers are going through is tragic. They have been left in the lurch and not given any priority. I don’t think it will be an easy task to get them back to work outside their home states in the near future. The nightmarish experiences during lockdown, including abrupt loss of livelihood, will haunt them for a very long time. The first priority of their employers and administration should be to win over their confidence. Guaranteed social security, good income and boarding and lodging arrangements will perhaps persuade them to come back.
Paramjeet Singh, Zirakpur
Ensuring their safe return can help too
Migrant labour is the lifeline of all industrial and agriculture activity, but due to Covid-19 everything is under lockdown, which has created problems for the labour force and left them without any financial means. People who hire them and Central and state governments should ensure they are provided all necessities. If they want to go home then their train and bus tickets should be paid for to ensure they return safely. Enough incentives should be given to them after the lockdown is over and the Covid-19 spread is controlled to ensure they will be able to secure their future and will find it worth their while to return to the cities.
Avinash Goyal
