Mangaluru, May 10: The pandemic and subsequent lockdowns have caused a great hit to daily wage laborers. This lockdown is no different. For the past week, daily wage laborers from outside Mangaluru who come to Mangaluru seeking employment have found themselves without jobs.
While the current COVID situation makes it important to impose such measures, the daily wage workers are bearing the brunt of this decision. Every single day that a lockdown is in place is another day of work and pay lost for them. Many of them work in agriculture, and daily wage work is what they do when there is no agricultural work in their hometowns. They come to Mangaluru as the pay for daily wage workers is higher than it is in their hometowns.
They work as coolies, house cleaning staff, gardeners, etc. Since the lockdown has been in place, they have been unable to find people willing to hire them. The workers wait at bus stands, hoping that people will see them, interact with them and give them work, but most of the time they return empty handed.
Although the current lockdown is to end soon, there is uncertainty surrounding whether or not another will be imposed. The livelihoods of these daily wage laborers have been completely derailed by this uncertainty. They are unsure when they will be able to have anything close to steady employment.
The workers say that they have already sent their children back to their hometowns. Earning somewhere from ₹500-700 a day, they do not have much room for savings, and the money goes towards necessary expenditure like feeding them, their children, and rent. As long as these repeated lockdown keep occurring, the more likely a prospect starvation becomes. The situation is dire.
While celebrities from all over the world call COVID a unifying experience, it does not take away from the reality of the situation. While it is true, the grief, fear, loss and isolation caused due to COVID is something everyone is experiencing, that isn’t all there is to it. The choice to isolate and social distance is simply not available to everyone.
Despite the severity of the COVID situation in India, the daily wage workers have no choice but to continually seek work. For most of them, their daily income does not come from just one place, and requires them to work in multiple places by the end of the day. This increases the number of people they interact with, making them more vulnerable to infection and transmission. This in turn puts their children and all their employers at risk. Because of this fear, at the moment, many people are avoiding hiring maids, gardeners etc. to minimize interaction and in fear of getting infected.
With the lockdown in place, the workers are still looking for work, with no avail. Since most of them are from outside Mangaluru, the live in rented rooms. Because of the draught in daily wage work, they are now struggling to pay rent and unsure of how long they will have a place to live.
As the cases increase, the desperation becomes worse. If lockdowns continue, it is highly likely that the workers will be unable to afford rent and have no choice but to return to their hometowns.
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