Tag: Construction Workers

‘I Want To Go Back Home, Uncertainty Here Is Killing’

By LokMarg

Rameshwar Sahu, 29, lives in a tin shed with his wife Janki and one-and-half-year old child. A daily wage mason, Sahu is jobless since the Coronavirus lockdown was announced. Sahu seniors often go to bed hungry in order to feed the infant properly.

I belong to Bilaspur (Chhattisgarh) and want to go back home as soon as possible. But I am stuck here (Greater Noida) with my wife and our one and half year old child. It had only been six months since I got the job to work as a mason at a construction site here.

For the last three months, my wife and I were able to work consistently for 25 days a month. Together, we earned around ₹800 each day. We thought that we will work hard and save enough money for our child but our lives and dreams came crashing down with this virus outbreak.

ALSO READ: Who Is Afraid Of Lifting The Lockdown

When the lockdown was announced, I wanted to rush home like many others. So I went to my contractor the next morning but he said he had only ₹1,000 to spare for me and advised me to buy ration by that money. Going home, which is too far, with merely ₹ 1000 in hand was not a good idea. Especially when we have a young child.

My family is completely dependent on local residents and police to provide us food. There are many like us who are stranded and queue up before community kitchen every day. Life of a daily wager is tough. Seemingly, we can earn `20,000 a month, but that is not a fixed income. We earn money for days we work. If the work is stopped for a day, there is no earning. Payments are often delayed.

ALSO READ: ‘Lockdown Has Turned Me Into A Beggar’

I am thankful to some groups of local residents who are helping us with raw and cooked food. But in the initial days, nobody was there to help and we faced hard time. We don’t know for how long this will go on and when we will resume our normal lives.

The uncertainty is killing. There are thousands who live in the shanties waiting either to restart their job or go home. The only thing that stops them from going home is donations from some local residents who always refill the ration after a week.

WATCH: ‘Hotel Industry Is Hit The Hardest’

People often ask why these labourers are going home. If they are so poor, what will they eat there? They don’t understand that we live in a close-knit society in villages. We have our own houses, small piece of land on which we grow vegetables. There is family and extended family members to help. But here, we live in cramped houses, with no food security and without any money. Without help from local apartment dwellers, we could not have even survived thus far.

Lockdown

‘I Wish To Work But Lockdown Has Made Me A Beggar’

By LokMarg

Mehtab Ali, 34, a construction worker, lives in a makeshift shanty of Greater Noida West. Jobless after the lockdown, Ali is forced to live on charity

I came to Greater Noida five years back with my wife and two children in search of better livelihood. Life was not easy in West Bengal. We migrated to Greater Noida with the help of a local contractor, who provided construction labour to several builders.

My only dream is to send both of my children to school and give them a respectable life. I don’t want them to become a labourer like me. Both my wife and I worked in the construction projects here towards that goal.

But as the market (real estate sector) dwindled, so did our income. Sometimes, projects were abandoned due to various reasons. We had little savings but were somehow making two ends when this lockdown was announced.

ALSO READ: Who Is Afraid Of Lifting Lockdown

In less than ten days, we had run out of ration and our savings. Many of our fellow workers had left on foot but we cannot imagine reaching our native place with two young children.

Now we are totally dependent on the doles from the well-meaning residents in nearby apartment, police and the government which are providing basic supplies to the poor who have stayed put.

We don’t want anything for free; we want to work and earn money; after all that is why we came here all the way from our hometown in West Bengal. There’s nothing more heartbreaking than watching our children go to sleep hungry.

There are some community kitchens providing food packets here but they don’t give more than one packet to one person. A family of four cannot survive in such a small quantity of food. We need ration and fuel to cook. That is all we need as of now.

ALSO READ: Stay At Home, Work From Home, Cook At Home

We don’t know what the future has in store for us. Will the contractors and builders give our jobs back after the lockdown? For how long will this lockdown will continue? The builders are rich people. We are the ones who built their projects with hard labour but in these difficult times they have abandoned us.

If we continue to live like this, we will be termed nothing more than beggars. We are labourers but we have self esteem. We don’t want free food. The government must think about people like us. There are thousands like me who are left with nothing after they become jobless in one stroke.

ALSO READ: Will Humans Turn Better Post-Pandemic?

When the strict lockdown was imposed, the police initially hounded some local residents who were trying to distribute ration. If the locals don’t help us fearing the cops, then who will? The situation is critical for us. We didn’t go home after the lockdown like thousands of daily wagers as we have small kids and our home is too far to be walked on foot. But if we are forced to live like this, we will have no other option than walking back home with our kids.

Toxic Air I

#Toxic Air I – ‘Dust, Pollution Part Of Life’

By LokMarg


paan-gutkha shops here in Deoghar (Jharkhand) on my way home in the evening.

My friends and I laugh wryly every time I see privileged people on television talking about how badly their countrymen are affected by air pollution. They sound like a joke. Do people sitting in those shining studios ever spare a thought about people like us? I am a construction worker and I too am forced to make peace with toxic air, even though my exposure to air pollution is much more prolonged than any of the experts or politicians sitting and making idle talk in television studios.

My day starts early in the morning as I start walking on dusty kaccha roads waiting for a ride to come by. If I am lucky, I get to hang on the sides of buses or sawari autos. On rare occasions, I am able to get a seat. But then the co-passengers cringe with disgust. Who would want a dirt-laden labourer sitting next to him/her? People talk about air pollution in Delhi and other big cities, but the truth is that it’s a national problem.

The air in villages and small towns is equally bad. Smog is probably not visible here but the amount of construction happening in this town is insane. A new building is being constructed after every 50 metres or so. Every time a lorry unloads bajri (red sand) or reta (sand), it is impossible to breath. My job is to lift soil, bricks, sand and small stones used for construction, for nearly eight to nine hours. I first have to dig the soil, or sieve the sand or arrange the bricks before I can start carrying the load.

In short, I am in close contact with dust particles throughout the day. My load can go up to as much as 40 kilograms at a time. Add to it, the pollutants from industries, coal plants, vehicles and stubble burning.  And I have more breathing issues than the grandparents in family!  Sometimes I have a lot of difficulty in breathing and it becomes worse during winters.

Breathing isn’t the only issue. Take a look at my hands. The skin has got dry and flaky; sand and other dust particles clog my skin pores and make my skin burn. My hands were not like this when I started to work at sites. My friends, who work as labourers in Delhi, sometimes get masks to cover their faces while working. They told me that being the capital city, many NGOs actively conduct regular health check-ups of construction workers, and distribute masks.

Sadly that is not the case in small towns. Here if you fall ill, you have to ignore it and keep working. Labourers, who work for hotel projects are slightly better off. At least they take care of the working conditions of the labourers. But things are bad, where I work. They use huge machinery. We are surrounded by big vehicles such as JCB machines, tube-well boring machines, and road rollers that keep plying at the construction site– the dust never settles.

I understand this is part and parcel of the vocation I have chosen for myself, but if the construction pace was a little slower, perhaps we could get a little space, where we could take little breaks to sit and relax. We do not even have masks to shield us from the pollution, my red gamcha is the only protection I have. To add to our woes, we mostly live in the poverty-ridden localities, where water shortage is often a problem. As a result we do not even get to clean ourselves properly after having been exposed dust and other pollutants.

Indiscriminate dumping of garbage is also a problem in our locality. We live in a haven for infections and the pollution makes us more prone to them. Cold, cough, running noses, burning eyes and headaches have become a part of my life. The situation is worse for female construction workers and older labourers. We earn around Rs 300-400 per day and we cannot afford to spend money on medication. We just pick ourselves up and march on. *(This is a fictitious name. The construction worker was just not interested in identifying himself despite frequent requests. All he wanted was his sufferings be known to others)