JOIN USLockdown renders labourers ‘stateless’ on borders
Migrant labourers from the Kalyana Karnataka region have been hit hard by the lockdown. Several of them are struck on inter-state borders as the police are not allowing them to enter the state. Some others entered the state, to escape check-posts on Maharashtra-Karnataka border.
Migration is common from the region owing to scanty rainfall and poverty. The people from Kalaburagi, Yadgir, Koppal, Raichur and Bidar districts migrate in large numbers to Maharashtra, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Pune in search of jobs.
“We had been to Maharashtra just 10 days ago to work as construction labourers and were staying in shanties at Tana area in Maharashtra. The lockdown rendered us jobless. We left Maharashtra in trucks, but reached Khajuri, on the Karnataka border on Friday night,” Sithabai, one of the migrant women told DH over phone.
Sithabai, a resident of Narayanpet near Gurmatkal of Yadgir district, is one of the 500-odd migrant labourers who were stranded since Friday night near Khajuri.
She said Karnataka police refused entry to them. “We spent the night on the border with children. The police refused to let us in on Saturday morning also. We managed to escape from them and are on the way to our village on foot,” she said.
Villagers served food to them on Friday night and the local administration has arranged food and accommodation for them on Saturday.
In Bidar district, most of the migrants returned to their villages before the Janata curfew because they had access to transportation on the national highway. The poor people from Lingasugur, Manvi and Deodurga taluks of Raichur district had migrate to the cities to earn for their living.
Raichur Deputy Commissioner Venkatesh Kumar said amid the strict implementation of total lockdown in the country, the migrants are returning home and are stuck at the borders. Health department staff are screening them for Coronavirus infections. Fifteen labourers from Uttar Pradesh are struck in Sindhanur. Arrangements have been made for them to stay at a private lodge there and rations have been supplied, he explained.