Lockdown in Tamil Nadu: SHRC seeks report on 1,600 guest workers who ‘suffer without food’ in Sipcot industrial estate near Kancheepuram

Srikkanth D | TNN | May 5, 2020, 18:01 IST

Guest workers in Chennai (Representative image)

CHENNAI: The State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) has sought a report from the chief secretary of Tamil Nadu on a petition from People’s Watch, an NGO, which stated that 1,600 guest workers are starving without food in a Sipcot industrial estate in Kancheepuram district.
According to the petition by the Madurai-based NGO, one of their members personally verified information that 1,600 workers engaged in different manufacturing units in the industrial estate have been suffering for about a month now without work.
The workers are from West Bengal, Odisha and Assam. They reside in Selaiyanur, Aranerri, Mambakkam, Kandigai villages near the manufacturing units.
“For the past 28 days, not a single government authority from either the state or the labour department has come to their assistance. Factory owners have said they are helpless. They had to manage with one meal a day with the savings until now,” the report stated.
The petition noted that it was surprising that the district administration had not taken care of such a huge number of workers and appealed to the authorities to help the workers by providing them with dry rations and access to cooked food for an initial few days.
The commission also sought a report from the Kancheepuram district collector and the additional chief secretary of labour department and the report is to be submitted within two weeks.