Life comes a full circle: Lost job, got job due to Covid-19

Nagpur: Pravin Bhaisware had lost his job in March after the mall where he worked had shut due to Covid-induced restrictions.
Living in the city’s biggest slum, Vandevi, in east Nagpur, Bhaisware was worried about the sustenance of his three-member family.
“Until February, the mall where I worked retained me. But in March, I lost my job,” he said. A social worker referred him to a hospital for ward boy duty. So, he happily took up the job. He said it was god sent.
Like Bhaisware, many who were rendered jobless due to the pandemic, have now found employment opportunities in the healthcare sector. The public health crisis has offered them a ray of hope with a wide array of job openings – from working as ward boys to sanitation workers in hospitals etc.
“This pandemic has come as an unprecedented shock to the labour workforce and has created a need for new jobs and new skills,” said social activist and founder director of Centre for Sustainable Development Leena Buddhe.
Neha Barai, a resident of a slum in west Nagpur, too shifted to the healthcare sector in October last year. “Earlier, I used to work in a readymade garments shop. But due to the extended lockdown, I faced hardships to earn a livelihood. Later, I joined as a temperature and oxygen screener in a hospital on Jaripatka ring road. The change in job has also increased my earnings from Rs 6,000 per month to Rs 10,000,” she said.
Ukesh Agre, an undergraduate from Dhangarpura slum in the city, used to work in a chartered accountancy firm. With no job in hand and failing to land one, he has now started sanitizing homes of Covid patients.
Like Agre, Mohan Kumar too has opted for the job of carrying out sanitization of homes and office premises. “My daily earnings have increased from Rs500 to Rs1000,” he said. Emulating Kumar, some of his friends too have taken up the same job.
Some of these youngsters told TOI that their daily earnings was more than what they used to earn while they were employed. According to most of them, their monthly earnings have improved with the increased workload.
A representative of a placement agency said the Covid-19 crisis has created a paradigm shift from a severe economic crisis to generating new job avenues. “The demand for new safety-related roles will continue to grow,” he said.
Many private hospitals have started keeping guards to protect their establishments from vandalism by relatives of Covid patients. This has resulted in a rise in demand for security guards, admits Ajeet Singh, a security guards agency owner.
He said that jobless youths were approaching him to work as security guards. Recently, many city youths who were working in Surat, returned and expressed their readiness to work as security guards.