Promised Rs 10K a month, paid just Rs 200: Bonded labourers rescued

Five bonded labourers have been rescued from the office of a borewell digging unit in Sahakaranagar, North Bengaluru.

All the five hail from Betul district of Madhya Pradesh. The issue came to the fore when the father of one of the labourers called the Jan Sahas helpline in Madhya Pradesh to report the poor condition of his son stuck in Bengaluru.

Jan Sahas, an NGO working against bonded labour and trafficking, alerted the Betul district magistrate who contacted the Bengaluru Urban deputy commissioner. Officials from the deputy commissioner’s office, the labour department and police were swung into action and, with the help of the International Justice Mission, rescued the five labourers.

Four of the labourers had left their hometown in November 2019 and joined the work after they were promised a monthly salary of Rs 10,000. Their mistake was in dialling the phone number on a visiting card that offered jobs. The fifth labourer was told about the job here by a friend and he was also promised the same salary.

However, the labourers were paid just Rs 200 to Rs 1,000, that too occasionally. The owner gave them groceries — rice, dal and vegetables — enough to cook two meals a day. The labourers started working at 6 am. They had to handle machinery and materials to dig borewells and clean the site at the end of the day. The work usually ended late at night.

They were also not provided with accommodation and were forced to live in a truck in poor conditions. Some of them had to sleep under the truck as there wasn’t enough space for all of them.

When the labourers asked the owner for their wages, he would tell them that he will put it into their bank accounts but that never happened. After the pandemic began, they informed the owner that they want to return home. However, the owner said they can leave only when he gets their replacement.

“Even if I am dying, I won’t come back here. I will work on my farmland or find work in my village itself. I came here because I was in need of some money to buy a motor for my own borewell and to save some money for my children’s education but we were cheated here. I hope I get the wages for the months that I worked here,” a 23-year-old labourer told IJM.

The district administration issued release certificates to the labourers on Tuesday.