Ranchi: Govind Kumar is a resident of Bagodar block in Giridih district. For nearly five years now, Govind has been working at a coffee shop in Mumbai’s Worli to sustain his family back home. Govind earns nearly Rs 30,000 a month, of which he can send a little back home. On Thursday, Govind doled out a chunk of his salary to purchase air tickets to the state. With Maharashtra announcing night curfews and lockdowns during the weekends in a desperate effort to tame the spiralling Covid-19 infection rate, Govind’s employers have downed the shutters indefinitely.
“Night curfews are in place till April 30, so my employer asked me to go home. He said he will summon me once situations ease out,” Govind said outside Ranchi’s Birsa Munda International Airport upon arrival.
Govind is not alone. Anil Kumar Mahto, a native of Hazaribag’s Ichak block, also arrived at the airport from Bengaluru. A carpenter working at a furniture store, Mahto’s employers gave him the marching orders under similar circumstances. “After sitting at home for months, I returned to work just before Diwali. And now, my job has become uncertain again,” Mahto rued after arriving at the Ranchi airport.
With several big cities imposing curbs, night curfews and lockdowns to tackle the second wave of Covid-19, Jharkhand is beginning to witness a reverse migration. Each day, hundreds of migrants are returning to Ranchi and other parts of the state from Maharashtra, Punjab, Delhi and Telangana and dispersing to their homes amid an uncertain future.
Akram Ansari, a cab driver based in Ranchi’s Hindpiri, has been ferrying migrant workers from Chhattisgarh. “Only last week, I drove back five workers from Raipur in my car to Ranchi. They paid me Rs 13,000. There are many others like them who are hiring vehicles and arriving at the state’s borders after their employers asked them to leave,”Ansari told TOI.
For Surendra Singh, a salon worker in Navi Mumbai, it is a waiting game. “I want to return to Mumbai because there is no work here,” Singh, a native of Giridih, said. “But if the situation doesn’t improve in Maharashtra, I will be forced to look for work as my savings will dry up by then,” he said.
While the state government had vowed to create a database of incoming migrants during the lockdown and provide them local employments, the idea did not materialise. As per estimates, nearly six lakh msigrant workers had returned to their homes in Jharkhand last year.
When contacted to know the government’s response, state labour minister Satyanand Bhokta’s office said he was campaigning in Madhupur. State labour commissioner A Muthukumar is camping in West Bengal’s Nadia district as an election observer. “We are keeping an eye on the inflow of workers during the second wave,” an official in the labour department said.