Bonded labourers rescued from Kancheepuram face threats from ex-bosses

CHENNAI: Twenty-eight bonded labourers from the Irular Scheduled Tribe community are facing death threats from their former bosses after they were rescued by the government and non-governmental organisations from a wood-cutting unit in Kancheepuram on Wednesday last.

The families have neither received their bonded labour release certificate nor any financial compensation. Without job or money and food and other basic amenities, they are trapped in uncertainty.

In addition to this, their former employers living near their settlement have been hounding them with death threats, they charged.

The labourers, who were rescued from the ‘karuvelam’ forest,  were relocated back to their village Periyakarumbur one hour away from their former workplace.

“We get our wages on the day the tractor comes to take the load. Couples with children earned Rs 300-350 a week and others earned Rs 200-Rs 250,” one of them said. Children went to school only on the days they came back home in Periyakarumbur, he added. 

However, when Express asked them about the last time they went to school, they said that it was during last Diwali when they were allowed to take leave.

“We worked even during Pongal,” said Kasi, one of the labourers. His wife Madhu (name changed) added that all families had to live inside the forests under make-shift tents.

The labourers are battling extreme uncertainty as wood-cutting is the only skill they have.

“Nobody in the neighbourhood wants to give us work because we complained about the bondage,” she said.SM Santhosh from International Justice Mission, who assisted in the rescue operation, said: “They need to be relocated from the former bosses and rehabilitated urgently.” 

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