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340 migrant workers, cleared to travel back home, refuse to leave Pune
With MIDC reopening, workers decide to stay put; dist collector calls this a positive, encouraging sign
With Maharashtra industries minister Subhash Desai, stating that at least 25,000 small and medium industries have resumed operations in Maharashtra, at least 300 migrant workers cleared for travel back to their home towns, refused to board trains taking them out of Pune.
On Sunday, 300 migrant workers with permission to board the Shramik Special train from Daund in Pune to Madhya Pradesh, did not report at departure, the civic administration and police staff at the station confirmed.
In a separate instance, 40 workers did not board a train to Uttarakhand from Pune on Monday; a sign, district collector Naval Kishore Ram, said is “positive and encouraging”.
“Many of these migrant workers told us that the industries they work have resumed operations and therefore, they are unwilling to go back. It’s a good sign things are moving back to normal,” said Ram.
According to Ram, as many as 12,421 migrant workers have returned to their native places from Pune in the last few days through the Shramik Special trains.
The workers, who were to board train at Daund, were among a group of of 1,172 migrants cleared to head home from the Kurkumbh industrial area.
“With the MIDC area here reopening, many of these workers, originally from Madhya Pradesh, have chosen not to move,” said Sanjay Patil, tehsildar, Daund.
In Pune city also, partial resumption of economic activity has slowed down requests from workers wanting to return home, said a contractor, requesting anonymity.
“Many of my relatives and friends are willing to go back to their villages, but I do not want to go back. We have faced a lot of trouble in the last two months, but now slowly, work is starting. If we stay back here, we will get money and can help our family financially from here,” said Sonu Shukla, a worker from Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh.
Shukla, along with others from Uttar Pradesh, is employed at a construction site in Katraj.
“We do the plaster of paris (POP) work at construction sites and all of us have decided not to go back. Our family members are regularly in touch with us over the phone and they also told me not to come back,” said Raghavram Prajapati, another worker from the Gonda district in UP.
Similarly, a small cement factory on the Kondhwa road has nine workers staying back here in Pune.
Umar Khan, one of the workers at this factory said, “We were lucky enough that our factory owner took care of us during the lockdown. He gave us money and food to survive. In fact, in the last couple of days we have started getting orders from our clients. So the work has begun.”
For Narendra Mishra, a security guard working at one of the banks on Satara road, who hails from Muzaffarpur, Bihar, it’s difficult to return back home.
“I want to go back home, but as I need the money, I will not go back. I am the only bread earner in my family and if I go back, there will no financial support to us, so I have decided to stay back here in Pune and work for my children.”
