Lawyers pool money to send workers home

Gurgaon: For the past two months, Yousub’s relatives back in Assam would call him up every day and ask him when he would return home. They had heard about Covid cases rising sharply in Gurgaon and were worried that Yousub, who needs to go out on the streets to collect trash every day, would contract the infection easily. The call of relief came on Saturday, when Yuosub told his relatives he was flying back home.
He was among 175 migrant workers from the northeastern state who took a flight to Guwahati after a group of lawyers pooled money to arrange for their travel. These workers have been living in Sector 21 for years and most of them earned a livelihood either as domestic staff or rag-pickers.
But the two months of lockdown rendered them jobless. Highrises refused to allow them in, while restrictions on movement meant rag-pickers could not go out on the streets. Savings dried up, so did their stock of ration. And food distributed by volunteer organisations almost always fell short.
“I was stuck in Gurgaon for over two months. Savings dried up and there was no ration. Now that I have reached my own state, I feel safer. I can at least be with my family here,” said Yousub. Asked what he would do in his village, he replied, “Farming, what else?”.
This group of 30-odd lawyers — alumni of the National Law School of India University — and a few other working professionals had formed a corpus two months ago and had been donating money to feed the migrant workers who lived in shanties nearby. They decided to send them home after a video of their plight was uploaded on social media.
“We saw this video and decided to send them home. We had already been donating money for their food. This time, we decided to donate a little more for their travel home,” said Sachin Bansal, a software engineer.
This group of volunteers had already sent around 60 migrants home in train last week. On Sunday morning, the remaining batch of 175 workers took the flight to their home state.
The move has raised hopes for 90 workers who are yet to leave the city. One of them, Anwar, helped others to get their boarding passes and other documents in order, preferring to stay back till everyone from his village has left.