Academics and activists in the city on Wednesday submitted a memorandum to Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray with a charter of six broad demands to improve the lot of migrant workers in the State, especially in cities like Mumbai and Pune. They have urged the government to not let workers become “Stateless, jobless and shelterless.”
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The memorandum, signed by 24 academics and civil society members states that the lockdown, while necessary to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus, has affected workers’ movement across States, access to water, food, healthcare, shelter and work. It says the number of migrant workers in the State is much larger than official estimates and includes both intra- and inter-State migrants.
The signatories include Sitaram Shelar of Centre for Promoting Democracy, Amrita Sharma of Aajeevika Bureau, Ritu Dewan, retired professor of economics at Mumbai University, and several professors from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences.
The memorandum has sought more migrant shelters in areas where they were staying, universalisation of the public distribution system and nutrition, health, water and sanitation, setting up a State-wide labour helpline, ensuring a safe passage back home, and wage and cash transfers.
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As many workers in the State are not eligible under the PDS scheme, the memorandum suggests that no eligibility criteria of identification and domicile should be required from them for availing rations. Several workers live in their workplaces, which are in industrial zones, construction sites and other unregistered units, and are not served by municipal corporations for basic needs such as water and sanitation.
Tuesday’s incident where migrant workers gathered at Bandra station demanding to go home, pointed to a deep sense of helplessness and uncertainty in the community, it said, and asked for a State-wide helpline to be accessible in languages such as Hindi, Kannada, Gujarati, Bengali and Odia.
It said several sectors are heavily dependent on migrant labourers, and it is in the interest of Maharashtra’s economy that the State assist them in getting their pending wages and fast track legal aid.
The memorandum has also urged the government to provide safe and free transport for workers as many of them depend on the harvest season. “The fear of spread of the epidemic to rural areas should not be the reason to hold migrant workers back in the city where there is no work and therefore no wages. The ones who have spent time in camps for the 21-day lockdown period are safe to be repatriated and the ones who need testing should be tested and repatriated,” said one of the demands.