Rehabilitation of migrant workers who returned to Assam is still hazy

STAFF REPORTER

GUWAHATI: The rehabilitation of migrant workers who returned to Assam from the other States during the corona-induced lockdown is still hazy. Even as job cards have been issued to 33,141 of them till August 11, a number of such card holders are reluctant to work as daily-wage earners for various reasons.

Major hurdles on this front are far from being sorted out. In the first place, registration of migrant workers who returned to the State is not yet complete. The Panchayat and Rural Development (P&RD) department has registered 56,288 migrant workers so far. The physical (door-to-door) registration of such workers has been affected by the recent waves of floods in the State. However, this problem seems to have been sorted out when the P&RD Department launched the 'Sampark' app that enables interested migrant workers to upload their details in it through their handsets.

Another major hurdle on this front is that a number of job-card holding migrant workers are not willing to work as daily-wage earners. The probable reasons are – maybe, they feel shy to work as daily-wage earners in their own localities or the sort of physical works they have to do under job cards are too hard for them. Yet a section of migrant workers has plans to go back to their earlier jobs after normalcy returns. An official said, "We have to provide works to job-card holders if they come forward, seeking jobs. However, we can't force them to work."

According to official data, till August 11 as many as 56,288 migrants who returned to Assam from other States were registered. This is besides the registration of 4,875 other inter-district migrant workers of the State. The P&RD department has issued job cards to 33,141 of the registered migrant workers. While 13,148 of the job-card migrant workers are keen to work as daily wage earners, around 24,000 are interested only for honing their skills through trainings.

According to sources, most of the migrant workers who have returned to the State were labourers and unskilled workers in other States. Now, the Department is contemplating alternative works for those migrant workers who are not eager to work as daily-wage earners.

The registration process has revealed that most of these workers of Assam were engaged in South Indian States. While 10,663 of them returned from Tamil Nadu, 8,598 were from Karnataka; 8,946 were from Kerala; 2,551 from Telengana; 5,477 from Maharashtra; 2,645 from Gujarat; 1,107 from Delhi among others. Of the returnees from abroad, 174 were from Nepal, 144 from Bhutan, 11 from UAE, and nine were from Kuwait among others.

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