Many migrant workers were left with no option but to take the treacherous journey home as they exhausted whatever meagre savings they had in order to survive in cities.?
Now, migrant workers from Hyderabad are being called back to the city for absolutely no cost.
Now that the country is in the phase 1 of ¡®unlocking¡¯ after the coronavirus lockdown, many builders in the city want to kickstart business activities and construction work again, and are offering to pay for migrants' air tickets reports?TOI. All they are asking is for is that the workers resume their duties at the earliest.
The migrants, mostly from UP, Bihar, and Jharkhand left the city weeks ago due to the lack of basic amenities and because they were unable to make ends meet.?
Now to lure them back to work their employers are booking air and AC train tickets for them.?
According to the report, carpenters, painters, granite workers, and scaffolding experts from Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal have already started to arrive in the city. The rest of the labour force is expected to arrive from Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, UP, Chhattisgarh, and Tamil Nadu.
As these migrant workers comprise almost 50% of the city's total labour force, builders are more than willing to pay Rs 4000-5000 per head for air tickets.
"These are desperate times and we need to invest in bringing workers back to the city. We have told our contractors to book flights, as long as the fares are less than Rs 5,000," R Suresh Kumar, senior VP of Prestige Group told TOI.?
A contractor, who mans one of Hyderabad's largest labour companies of over 2,500 workers, said few construction firms are looking for flight options currently to bring workers from Bihar and Bengal mostly.?
¡°Right now, only 10% to 15% of them are left. We have to give some incentives for them to return. Developers have no choice but to spend," he reportedly said.
However train and plain tickets are not the only things builders are trying to lure the workers with. Many are offering advance payments too. "We are offering up to Rs 10,000 in advance, over and above their travel fare. This month, we have booked tickets for at least 300 labourers," TOI quoted Tapas Patel, CEO of Om Sree Builders and Developers as saying.?
As the country moves towards the semblance of normalcy, one might expect migrant workers to move back to their places of work soon.?