COVID-19: Angry migrants in India force factory officials to flee

Patna: Factory owners are bearing the brunt of not taking care of migrant workers during the corona-induced lockdown, forcing them to face untold hardships and ultimately return to their homes after much difficulty.

A peculiar incident took place in Buxur district of Bihar on Thursday when the angry workers forced the officials of a prominent cotton factory to flee their village, saying they no longer want to go outside and are happy with what they have. The company staff had come with at least five minibuses to carry the labourers with them.

Residents from the Mathila village were surprised when they found as many as five buses waiting for them outside the village once they got up in the morning on Thursday. No sooner had they stepped out of their homes than the manager of a cotton mill factory at Panipat in Haryana along with another company official asked the workers to go with them.

The manager requested the workers to get ready and ride the luxury buses saying the factory has run into a huge loss owing to the shortage of workers. The manager also promised to give an advance of Rs10,000 to each worker on the spot and handsome wages but none agreed to go with them. Instead the angry labourers behaved roughly and hurled abuse at them for abandoning them during the time of crisis. As many as 110 workers from this particular village worked in that cotton mill before lockdown but now all have returned to their home.

“You left us to die when the lockdown was enforced. You didn’t think a bit as to how our family will survive? Who will help us in crisis? How will we pay the room rent?” one of the workers Pyarelal Rajak told the manager.

Another worker Dilip Tatavan said as many as 17 of them survived on one kilogram of flour when they faced severe financial crisis after the factory was shut due to lockdown and they were not paid their wages or even an advance to buy necessary goods. “Quite many of us sold out our goods which we had bought after hard labour like scrap and reached home after hiring a truck. Each of us had to pay Rs3,000. We can’t forget the torture in the whole of our lifetime. We will live on salt but won’t leave our home,” said another worker Pintu Kumar.

Villagers said the company officials stayed at the village for some two hours and continued beseeching for help but the workers remained unmoved. Many migrant workers who returned home have turned to farming, are selling vegetables or fish or got jobs in the government-run Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA).

At the same time, hundreds of migrant workers in other districts of Bihar, however, have gone back to the old places as they didn’t get any job in their areas and had been battling starvation. In several districts of Bihar, such as Muzaffarpur, Saharsa, Purnia, West Champaran, Sheohar and Sitamarhi, big farmers have sent luxury buses, cars, tickets for A/C trains and even plane tickets to lure the workers after facing severe crisis of workers post lockdown.

An estimated three million migrants have returned to the state after lockdown—while over 2.1 million returned by Shramik special trains, the rest came by hiring vehicles or walking on foot, covering a distance of more than a thousand kilometres under sweltering heat and living on paltry food.