Labour influx in Mormugao taluka is on the rise. The reasons behind this trend is due to the high demand for labour workers owing to the industrial estates and port located in the taluka as well as the fact that the same demand is not being met by local labour force. Besides, the migrant labourers are willing to take up menial labour at a cheap daily wage, which do not give the contractors who hire them any additional headaches in terms of resource mobilisation and budgetary constraints.
A labour contractor from Zuarinagar, said it is a simple matter of demand and supply and that if Goans were ready to take up all the manual labour work, the dependence on bringing in migrant labourers would not have risen in the first place.
According to sources, on an average, around 40 to 50 labourers are brought from States like Rajasthan, Orissa, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, and Jharkhand. They are paid a daily wage of Rs 600-650. When asked about the works done by these labours, he said that they carry out the work of laying underground pipe-lines, road building, construction and all other hard manual jobs.
Margao based contractor, Gaurav Dukle said, “We won’t be able to manage the pace and commitment of works we have undertaken if we don’t hire labour contractors. We don’t have a choice of labourers when it comes to labour contractors system” said Gaurav.
Other contractors add that besides the construction business, even the agriculture business depends on such a workforce.
Where do they stay?
Another labour contractor, said around 60 to 70 persons including their families come to Goa for few months to do manual jobs at construction sites and other hard jobs. When asked about what all facilities they get, the contractor said that most of the labourers stay in temporary huts near the construction site. Others stay in rented premises in a group by paying rent. The contractor added that the labourers are registered with the police station and the verification process etc is also taken care of.
Vasco Railway station entry point
When contacted, Deputy Station manager of Vasco Railway, Amit Kumar Akela, he stated that there are three main express trains such as the Goa Express, Patna Express and Amaravati-Howrah Express, which arrive regularly at the station from which, many tourists and labours come from Delhi, UP, Bihar, Howrah, Bengaluru, Jharkhand and other places. On an average around 1000 labours come every day in Vasco.
Both the Mormugao Police station and Vasco police station stated that they are maintaining a record about the number of migrant labourers and confirm that these numbers are in thousands.
‘Fish industry also depends on migrant labourers’
The fishing industry employs huge numbers of non-Goan labourers. There are around 3,000 labourers employed for various works at Cutbona jetty including sailing on the trawlers, which will embark after the fishing ban comes to an end this month. Malim, Betim are other jetties where there is a sizeable migrant labour workforce who works in the fishing businesses. These labourers reportedly come to Goa work during the season and fall back to their home states.
Who is monitoring entry at Konkan Railway?
The Deputy General Manager of Konkan Railway Corporation Ltd (KRCL), Baban Ghatge while reacting to the issue of migrants said that the sudden increase may be attributed to the fishing season that is going to begin soon in Goa.
The DGM said that the train going back to Patna via Vasco is stuffed with the same amount of passengers on Wednesday as there are in the train, which came to Goa on Monday. He added that except for reservation passengers, there is no mechanism to monitor the inflow of persons from a specific region.
