Inability to pay rent, no assurance of work forces migrants to leave

The pressure to pay rent is such that migrant workers are slipping out of villages in the dead of the night to evade their landlords, some have shifted to their relatives’ houses and others have locked the rooms and simply left without their luggage.

The inability to pay rent and no assurance of work are the primary reasons migrant workers are leaving for their home states. A majority of the migrant labourers working in industries and other allied sectors, who stay in the city’s urban villages and unauthorised colonies are under pressure to pay rent and electricity bills or vacate the premises. In some instances, landlords are seeking interest on the delay in payment of rent, which ranges from ₹2,000 to ₹4,000 for a single room, city-based trade union leaders said.

Of the 4 to 5 lakh construction workers in the city, around 70% have already left for home and the remaining are also looking for ways to leave, the trade union leaders said. (Sunil Ghosh/HT file photo)

Of the 4 to 5 lakh construction workers in the city, around 70% have already left for home and the remaining are also looking for ways to leave, the trade union leaders said.

The pressure to pay rent is such that migrant workers are slipping out of villages in the dead of the night to evade their landlords, some have shifted to their relatives’ houses and others have locked the rooms and simply left without their luggage.

“I am a widow and am raising two children by myself. I don’t have a source of income since the lockdown has begun. I was not able to pay the rent of ₹2,200 to my landlord in Vishnu Garden and so was forced to shift with my sister,” Lakshmi Devi, who hails from Pilibhit in Uttar Pradesh, said.

The company where Devi and many others like her worked paid their salary for the seven to eight days she worked in March. After that, she has been jobless and now depends on her relatives for survival.

While Devi has a family to take care of her, Mushtaq Alam and his friends, who stayed in a large room in Nathupur village, had to leave it early Friday after their landowner refused to defer the rent.

His relatives in Bihar, who were touch with trade union leaders in the city, also got worried when the group did not respond to repeated phone calls and messages. “Most of the migrant workers are worried and their relatives are also calling us for help. With no work, the labourers are bound to go home,” Rajender Saroha, joint secretary, Bhawan Nirman Kamgaar Union, said.

Another group of workers from Dundahera, who left for their village in western UP, said that nine of them stayed in a single room paying ₹1,000 per head. “Living locked inside a room had become difficult. Our financial condition became precarious so we chose to leave,” Nayeem, a tailor, who worked in Udyog Vihar, said.

Most migrant labourers are feeling desperate. Yogesh Ram, a rickshaw-puller started his journey with two relatives on a rickshaw and had reached Agra by 4pm on Friday. “We left on Thursday morning as there was no money to pay the rent. It will take us six to seven days to reach Agra,” he said, adding that people along the route were helping them with food and water and the police were not troubling them.

The mass migration of workers, the trade union leaders said, is continuing because there are inadequate housing facilities for labour and they are getting little help from authorities and industries. “The consequences of this mass migration are going to be very negative on the economy as the workers are unlikely to return before they feel safe again,” he said.

A district administration spokesman said that the authorities were focussing on ensuring adequate food and essential material to migrants who continue to stay in the city. “We are also taking all steps to ensure that those who want to return are provided all kinds of help and those who want to leave face no problems in reaching their home states,” he said.