Around 8 pm on September 26, Vijay Mahato, a 29-year-old worker from Jharkhand, was on a bus deep in the jungles of Cameroon. He and 17 of his workmates were returning to their living quarters after a long day, working to install power transmission lines. They were looking forward to a good night’s sleep.
But as the vehicle rumbled along the jungle road, it smashed into a parked trailer.
The driver of the bus, a native Cameroonian, and another worker from Jharkhand, Hemlal Mahato, died on the spot. “Most of us were injured,” Vijay said. “My head, hands and legs were cut open and bled.” He and the others were rushed to a hospital for treatment. Bhubneshwar Mahato, one of the workers, lost his left arm in the accident.
Vijay remained in the hospital for a day. The company he and the others worked for, Transrail Lighting, covered the cost of their treatment. It gave Vijay 13 days of rest following the accident.
But in October, Vijay recounted, though he had not fully recovered, the company instructed him to return, warning that he would be marked absent if he did not, and that money would be cut from his pay. Further, although he had a relatively senior role among workers before the accident, afterwards, he was demoted to assistant worker. He received no compensatory pay for his injury.
Scroll emailed Transrail Lighting seeking responses to the workers’ allegations about the company. This story will be updated if it responds.
“A new migration pipeline”
The accounts of Vijay and his co-workers are striking because, while India is the leading country of origin for international migrants, African countries are not among the most common destinations for these workers.
Data from the ministry of external affairs shows that the United States of America, the United Arab Emirates and Malaysia are the top three destination countries for Indian migrants.
Even within Africa, Cameroon is not a popular destination – the only African country to feature in the list of top ten destinations for Indian migrants is South Africa, a country with which India has had strong historical ties.
“Workers usually go in large numbers to countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar,” said Shikha Lakra, head of the State Migrant Control room, a body under Jharkhand’s labour department that is dedicated to supporting migrant workers from the state in distress in India and abroad. “Cameroon is a newer destination.”
The rescued workers Scroll spoke with said that they had been observing workers in and around their villages travel abroad for work for about ten years. While Vijay Mahato had previously travelled to Sri Lanka for work, Khirodhar Mahato had travelled to Saudi Arabia. Both said they had clear contracts for their periods of employment in those countries, which laid out precise work hours and payment.
An expert on international labour, who asked not to be identified because her employer had not authorised her to speak to the media, explained that as an increasing number of Indian companies expanded their operations abroad, they were likely to recruit more Indian workers to work in different countries. Indeed, Transrail Lighting is an Indian company, and the recruitment agents and managerial staff that workers interacted with were all Indian.
The expert noted that Indians had been travelling to other African countries for work for some years. “They have been going to countries like Nigeria and Uganda since decades,” she said. About workers traveling to Cameroon, she said, “Maybe this is a new migration pipeline that is being created.”
But as migrants travel to newer countries, they face greater risks of finding themselves overworked and underpaid, and trapped in situations with little freedom. Since Jharkhand set up the control room in 2020 as a response to the pandemic, Lakra noted that the state government has rescued over 1,800 migrant workers who had been stranded abroad.
Indeed, other stories have also emerged of workers from Jharkhand in Cameroon finding themselves in distress. In July last year, in a similar incident, the Jharkhand government rescued 27 migrant workers stranded in Cameroon who had worked for four months under contract with Larson and Toubro for a construction project. The workers alleged that they had not received any pay, and did not have enough food to eat.
Despite these massive risks, workers continue to migrate abroad because they face harsh poverty at home.
According to Niti Aayog’s 2023 report on multidimensional poverty, Jharkhand was the second poorest state in the country after Bihar. A paper on migration patterns in Jharkhand noted that “more than 20 years have passed since Jharkhand became a new state in 2000, but the general economic situation of its citizens has barely improved. The region is still plagued by widespread poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, lack of development, and out-migration.”
Recruited by agents
Vijay is from Jharkhand’s Hazaribagh district. He arrived in Cameroon in early September and was part of a group that included 46 others from Jharkhand, all of whom were working for Transrail Lighting. The workers were all from Bokaro, Giridih and Hazaribagh districts. “These districts are a key migration belt in the state,” said Rajesh Prasad, a joint labour commissioner in the Jharkhand government.
The workers had been recruited from Jharkhand through agents or middlemen who were from their districts and were known to them. The agents charged each worker around Rs 40,000 for travel and visa expenses. The workers were tasked with setting up power transmission lines in rural Cameroon for the company.
The workers recounted that they were not provided with any contracts listing the terms of their work. Rather, they were told that they would receive their contracts upon reaching Cameroon. “They told us that we would be working under the company as its employees, but this never happened as we never received any contracts,” said Khirodhar Mahato, another worker from Bokaro.
Their work day would begin at 6 am, when they would leave the quarters in which the company housed them, and commute around an hour and a half to their worksite. They would return to their quarters 13 hours later, at 9 pm. They were given $100 for food expenses each month, but this money was not always paid on time. Thus, sometimes they had enough “for three square meals”, said Vijay. “But other times we only had plain rice with a little salt and onions on the side.”
The agents had promised the workers a monthly salary of around $450, or a little less than Rs 40,000 – some, with more experience, were offered more. “In India, we would only make around Rs 12,000 for the same kind of work,” Vijay said. “We all travelled there as we were promised better pay.”
But weeks went by, the workers recounted, and they did not get paid. Each time they asked for pay, they would be told to wait another fortnight. “When we approached the company men, they told us that they were not responsible for our wages and we would have to speak to the agents who got us to Cameroon,” said Khirodhar. The agents, who had not travelled to Cameroon with the workers, did not respond to the workers’ calls.
Even after the workers met with the accident, they said, the employers did not pay them what they were owed.
On November 19, around two months after the accident, the workers went on strike, and broke it off only after company representatives assured them that they would be paid by December 1.
But, they said, their employers did not keep this promise.
On December 3, the workers refused to go to work unless they were paid their dues. But, they said, their manager threatened them, saying that they would be denied water in their living quarters, and not be given their allowance for food, unless they returned to work. By December 4, the workers had run out of water.
The next day, the workers decided to make a video and request for help from India. In the video, the workers complained that they were not being paid their wages, and asked to be rescued from Cameroon and taken back home. On December 5, the video was published on the Facebook account of Sikander Ali, a media personality in Jharkhand.
Finally, word about the stranded workers reached the chief minister’s office and the state’s control room sprung into action to bring them back home. It was only now that the company replenished their water supply, workers recounted.
On December 29, 11 workers reached home, while the others returned to Jharkhand in different groups over the following week. Only one worker remains in Cameroon – Bhubaneswar Mahato, who lost his hand and is undergoing treatment for it. The control room has negotiated the release of the workers’ pay – while their wages have been processed, the amount they are owed as their food allowance has not yet been cleared.
But though most of the workers have returned safely, both Vijay and Khirodhar said that agents involved in their recruitment, who are in different countries abroad, had been calling some of them and threatening them to try and force them to retract their complaints. “But we won’t back down, we want justice,” said Khirodhar Mahato.
Lack of protections
The expert on labour explained that currently, there was a lacuna in Indian law when it came to protecting migrant workers travelling abroad.
Under rules framed by the ministry of external affairs, certain categories of individuals – including unskilled workers who have not studied up to Class 10 – seeking to migrate overseas to one of 18 countries listed in the rules must obtain a clearance from a protector of emigrants, an official in the ministry of external affairs. The official obtains information about the conditions of employment from the recruiter, such as the workers’ salaries, and living and working conditions, to ensure that they meet certain minimum standards.
The law also requires agents who recruit workers to travel abroad to register themselves under the office of the protector.
But Cameroon is not among the 18 countries listed in the rules.
The labour expert explained that the policy for clearances was drafted based on older migration corridors, and that the government needed to take into account new markets and new migration corridors that had emerged. “India is one of the easiest countries to get labour from,” she said. “The law is incomplete and outdated and there is an urgent need to update it.”
But broader efforts are underway to raise awareness about the pitfalls of migrating abroad for work. Jharkhand’s control room has circulated its helpline number in district labour offices and local NGOs in migration-prone areas. “We also run awareness campaigns and encourage self-employment and skill development programmes in these areas,” said joint labour commissioner Rajesh Prasad.
Jobs, however, remain scarce. Both Vijay and Khirodhar said that they would prefer to work in India if they could earn an adequate livelihood. Upon their return from Cameroon, government officials told the workers to fill several forms that would enroll them in employment schemes. “But nothing has happened so far and we have not been provided any work prospects,” said Khirodhar.
Khirodhar, whose father died when he was a child, has been working as a labourer since his teenage years, and is currently responsible for his wife, mother and two children. With hopes of giving his children a better future, he has admitted them into private schools. “We have a little bit of land, but the farm produce from that only lasts us for two months,” he said. “Employment conditions in Jharkhand are terrible. If given a chance, I hope to go abroad again and earn better.”
Vijay has a wife and two children to take care of, as well as two unmarried sisters whose weddings he is responsible for arranging, since his father has a mental disability. “I went to Cameroon because I felt I would earn a bit more money if I worked there,” he said. “There are hardly any opportunities in Jharkhand and lots of people looking for work so the competition is also really high. But I would prefer to stay here and work.”
