Nizamabad: Migrants pass hamalis' burden on to women's shoulders as parting gift

Nizamabad: While the migrant workers from north India heading home, their burden is being shouldered in Telangana by women in fields, markets and purchasing centres across Telangana State.

If one doesn't believe, one should visit Mondi Chintha thanda and DB thanada in Dharpalli mandal of Nizamabad district. Usually, women are employed for transplantation paddy sapling.

But nowadays they are performing the job of hamalis as well at the food grain purchasing centres set up by the government to buy paddy at village and mandal levels. The paddy purchase centers have been set up under the Kolipaka Prameriya Co-operative Society.

Since there is a shortage of labourers, farmers are worried that paddy would remained piled up in the absence of hamalis who would upload and unload the agricultureal produce on trucks. On the other hand officials may get an excuse for not buying their produce Therefore, the women labourers of the district have replaced the departing north Indians hamalis and doing their job.

Some female farm hands chipped in. Therefore, the female farm hands who planted the rice into field are now also loading paddy on vehicles and unloading the same at the purchasing centres.

Tribal women laborers are weighing 41 kg sized grain gunny bags and loading the paddy bags over the shoulder in the trucks. Not one, not two, but 13 women farmers have become hamalis.

With the establishment of a purchasing center in the village, the women are given the hamali work as a substitute for lost work due to machinery as well.

Women work in harsh conditions, for minimum wages in paddy purchase centers each day. One day some women hamalis collapse due to heat.

Doing this work for every summer of their lives has made their movements almost mechanical and working in large groups, they manage to transport paddy over large swathes of land each day. But, the land they work on is not theirs, neither is the rice they grow.

The wages are abysmal.

Women's work the job of weighing and loading are part of the package of services offered by a group on a single bag for which they are paid between Rs4.75 and Rs 5.20. The hamali wage will go to the female worker on the day it was released by Civil Supply Corporation. Still The wages they earn in the burning harsh conditions cannot meet current financial needs.