Title - State continues to neglect a population that fuels growth

CHENNAI: Ask one of the hundreds of men who have flooded the Chennai Central what his name is. Tamag, he might say. Or Angeu. Or James. You never know. Often they are nameless people with Mongoloid features. Until they gathered at the railway station, many in the city did not realise there were so many of them in Chennai.They are invisible and a silent group of toilers who have made Chennai their place of livelihood. Working at construction sites, many of them don't have identity cards, registration or structured wages. This is in violation of a Supreme Court order that all state governments should register migrant workers under the Building and Other Construction Workers Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1996.J K Tripathy, city police commissioner said the police has no database of migrant workers living in the city. The state labor department is yet to prepare a register of migrant workers, even though many of them work for multi-crore government projects in the state.Rubin Singh, a migrant from Guwahati, was lured to work at a construction site near Taramani with an offer of 5,000- 8,000 as advance pay. "My first thought was to accept it. But, we get paid only a pittance of 140 for eight hours and 180 for 12 hours a day," he explained before catching a train home via Patna.Experts suggest migrant workers should be brought under the welfare net and provided PDS cover and benefits such as health cards and access to social security services. Kerala, for instance, has put in place a better model, distributing identity cards to thousands of them. The health department there organizes health camps and the labour department inspects sites and fines employers who fail to provide standardized facilities for workers.

R Geetha, who works with migrant workers, said the labour department in TN refuses to include migrant labourers in its welfare schemes.

"The state is least bothered about thousands of workers who build our metro rail, airport and huge buildings in the city. So, they live like slaves without any social security drawing a pittance of 3,000 - 5000 a month," she said.

Madhumita Dutta, an activist of the Campaign for Justice and Peace, who works with about 2,000 migrant workers at a fabrication plant near Sriperumbudur said, "They live like animals. They live in places that are worse than cattle sheds. The sewage and drain water over flows and they prepare food in very unhygienic conditions.