EZHIMALA, 1 March 2008 — Tens of thousands of workers from remote states like West Bengal have arrived in Kerala where labors are much in demand to fill the vacuum caused by large-scale migration from the state to West Asia.
“After a day of hard work, all I could earn was Rs.60 to 100 in Bengal. Here I get Rs.150 a day and I have already sent Rs.8,000 home. My family bought new clothes and had good food to celebrate Eid Al-Adha,” said Mohammed Siauddin who hails from a Bengali village.
He is among some 500 migrants working at the site of India’s largest Naval Academy coming up in this northern Kerala village.
Good wages and better working conditions have induced large-scale migration from other states into Kerala. The average daily wage of a rural laborer in Kerala, according to the official data, is Rs.185 while in West Bengal, it’s Rs.71 and in Thripura, it is as low as Rs.55 a day.
According to the state’s Labor Department, at least 115,000 migrant workers are engaged in various sectors in the state, but unofficial estimates put the number at almost double.
Earlier, it used to be mostly Tamilians who dominated the labor market but things have changed with rapid industrialization in the neighboring state. Besides West Bengal, workers from Bihar, Orissa and Rajasthan are brought to the state by labor agents who give an attractive amount in advance.
“They paid me Rs.10,000 before I left my village. That’s a pretty good amount of money for my family’s upkeep for sometime,” said Ranjan, who hails from Bihar. He sends regular money orders to his wife who looks after their three children.
“The trend has been there for the past five or six years ever since the work on the naval academy started. They swarm the local bazaar in the evening and it’s a slice of India out there. You’ll rarely meet a Malayalee,” said Dhanapalan, a local resident.
According to Joint Labor Commissioner Balachandran Nair, they are coming in hordes these days prepared to work in any part of the state. Around 90 percent of them are engaged in constructing roads, bridges and huge buildings that are springing up across the state while the rest are engaged in brick-making and other odd jobs.
“Unlike Keralites, they are not aware of labor rights and laws and are willing to work for low wages. While a local labor gets Rs.250 in urban areas, a migrant worker is paid only Rs.100 to Rs.120,” Nair said.
According to the Inter-State Migrant Laborers Act, employers who bring in workers have to provide them with houses, potable water and other basic facilities. But in most cases, the law remains in paper.
Labor Minister P.K. Gurudasan said the state government had given strict instructions to construction firms and labor agencies to ensure that migrant workers are not exploited. Deaths were reported in labor camps of a leading construction firm in Thiruvananthapuram two years back, allegedly because of starvation.
“The state labor rules insist that employers should maintain a register showing details of the number of workers, wages and working conditions. But many aren’t following this,” he said.
According to a study on migration by the Center for Development Studies, Kerala workers’ reluctance to do manual jobs is one of the reasons for the new phenomenon.
Wife Says Yahya Was Framed
Yahya Hiyaz Kammakkutty, who was arrested in Bangalore on terror-related charges, is actually a victim of business rivalry, according to his wife Fareeda.
“My husband has been trapped by people in the US-based company who did not want him to quit the firm and set up his own business,” said Fareeda who moved to her father’s house last week.
“The same people are also planting all sorts of stories against him,” she said in a telephone interview from her village near Mukkam in Kozhikode district. She also admitted that her husband was once a member of the outlawed Students Islamic Movement of India.
She says her husband was about to start a small company to market HR modules and many of the clients with whom he enjoyed good rapport were expected to switch to his side, which worried his rivals.
“They say he’d stolen data from GE Healthcare (where he was working previously). Do you think it’s that easy to steal data from the company where every keystroke is monitored and recorded?” Fareeda, who holds a diploma in Arabic language, told Arab News.
Yahya, 31, was picked up from his two-bed rented house at Gurappanapalya, in Bangalore, on Feb. 18 reportedly based on information gleaned from a suspected terrorist.
“We were just back from Kerala after attending the wedding of my brother. We were at home after dinner when plainclothes sleuths came at around 10 p.m. and took away my husband saying they’ll release him after 20 minutes’ interrogation. But I have not seen him since,” she said.
“Local residents and the media started haunting us. So we checked into a hotel in the city and stayed there for five days, visiting police stations with our lawyer and hoping to meet Yahya. But there was nobody to help us,” she said.
“He was associated with SIMI during his student days but he stopped all his relationship with the group as soon as it was banned,” Fareeda said.
“He was, however, a devout Muslim offering prayers regularly while concentrating on his duties. He also performed Haj last year.”
