Covid-19 lockdown: Only 6% of migrant workers have received full wages till April 26, says report
About 78% of the 10,929 labourers who reached out to the organisation have not been paid at all.
Of a group of 10,929 migrant workers stranded across the country amid the nationwide lockdown to contain the coronavirus infection, only 6% had received their full wages till April 26, according to a report by the Stranded Workers Action Network, a group of 73 volunteers. About 78% of the labourers who contacted the organisation had not been paid at all.
Among those who are self-employed – such as street vendors and rickshaw pullers – more than 99% had not earned any money in the first 32 days of the lockdown.
Approximately 59% of the 16,863 workers who contacted the voluntary organisation are daily wage labourers at factories and construction workers. Eleven per cent of them are non-group based daily wage earners such as drivers and domestic workers and 16% are self-employed at various establishments in the unorganised sector.
The average daily income of these migrant workers is Rs 380, according to the analysis.
By April 14, over 87% of the workers who got in touch with the organisation had not been paid by their employers, while about 13% had been partially paid. As of April 26, about 6% of them managed to receive their full wages and about 16% have been paid a part of their income.
While these numbers are abysmally low, the plight of workers is further compounded by fears that the payments received by them will be deducted from their salary after the lockdown ends, the report said. Most of the factory and construction workers, on the other hand, claimed they have not received their wages for previous months. Many of them have been forced to stay back in urban centres, often in squalid makeshift conditions, fearing that they will lose their dues if they leave before they are cleared, it added.
The migrants exodus, when tens of thousands of daily wage workers crammed into buses or marched on foot to get back to their native villages, became the defining image of the countrywide lockdown announced on March 25.
The Ministry of Home Affairs on Friday afternoon allowed movement of migrant workers, pilgrims, tourists, students and “other persons” by special trains to be operated by the Ministry of Railways amid the nationwide lockdown to curb the spread of the coronavirus. Subsequently, the railway ministry issued a slew of regulations meant to ensure travel without the risk of infection.
In a separate survey of 11,000 migrant workers, conducted on April 15, the Stranded Workers Action Network had found that half of them had stocks of ration that would only last them less than a day. As many as 89% had not been paid by their employers at all in that period, the report added.
On Friday, the Centre decided to extend the nationwide lockdown imposed to combat the coronavirustill May 17. During this period, limited economic activities will be allowed in designated orange and green zones.
The number of coronavirus cases in India has risen to 37,336, according to the health ministry’s Saturday morning update. Covid-19 has killed 1,218 people in the country.
