Daily wage labourers, migrant workers and marginalized communities across India have been grievously affected by the steps to flatten the curve. In Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru and other cities, thousands are going hungry, sleeping in filthy spaces under bridges, facing apathy from employers, people and authorities alike. And caught amidst this huge maze the poor workers are neither able to get back to their homes nor able to survive this deadly lockdown.
Here we come with an inspirational story where Tirupur’s IAS named Vijayakarthikeyan along with his team is providing weekly rations to 62,000 migrant workers. He is spearheading a relief kit distribution initiative to ensure that factory workers stay well-fed and safe. The city has a opulation of around 3 lakh workers from Assam, Bihar, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal. With strict lockdown rules implemented all over the country, many of these workers are now stranded, some even without the means to have a decent meal.
With a 24*7 operating control room and enough ration to feed over 62,000 people, Vijayakarthikeyan is carrying out relief measures on a war footing.
He says, “We have categorized the workers into three groups. One where the employers take care of the accommodation and food. The second group consists of labourers who get food and essentials but do not have accommodation. The third category is of workers who have neither. Our focus is on the last”.
He also made sure to employ multilingual operators in the control room to communicate with the labourers from a diverse background. Whenever they receive a lead about a worker or a community of workers going hungry, the control room gets to work. With over 1,200 volunteers and government officials spread all across the district of Tirupur, the control room operators have to assign specific tasks to the right person.