Out Of Payrolls, Migrant Labourers Are Deprived Of Healthcare and Social Welfare Benefits

In dusty Peramanur village close to Chennai’s industrial suburb of Maraimalai Nagar, screaming sign boards guide visitors to contractors, pharmacists and ‘God’.

But when Pawan Kumar, a 19-year-old labourer from Bihar, keeled over with abdominal pain, there was little help. The contractor who had engaged him abruptly terminated his service. The local pharmacist pumped him with pills to no effect. A religious trust he approached promised divine intervention, and nothing else.

Pawan, who had toiled in Chennai for three years, was ready to head home, when a research team from Loyola College and Indian Social Institute, Bangalore, reached Maraimalai Nagar to document the lives of inter-state migrant workers in the manufacturing sector................Read more

Source: The Times of India