Lockdown hits daily wage earners livelihood

Amaravati: The minimum and daily wage earners are drastically affected by the lockdown followed by COVID19 in the State. They are unable to pay even the monthly instalments for their small Chit funds or to the lenders from where they took money for a short term.

Majority of the daily wage labour dependents on Chits. They save money daily and pay the instalments, generally. On the other hand, some others take the money from lenders with an agreement that they repay daily or weekly in small instalments. But now, the people are saying that they are unable to pay even Rs 2000 instalment per month or even Rs 100 per day as their small savings exhausted and did not find work in the last couple of weeks.

For instance, a small family of four members in Vijayawada landed in many financial troubles. B Lakshmi, a resident at Krishna Lanka in Vijayawada, who migrated from Srikakulam has been working as weekly wage labour in the construction sector said that she did not face this kind of problem in her entire life of 47 years. She generally earns at least Rs 2500 to Rs 2700 per week if she works for six days in a week. And her husband, Laksmana Rao, who is suffering from a hearing problem, is working as a watchman at an apartment for Rs 5000 a month. Both of them together earn Rs 13,000 to Rs 15,000 per month. Now, her family is in complete distress, she explained.

She informed this correspondent that she took Rs 5000 from a lender with a commitment to pay Rs 100 per day. As they have to spend all the money for daily expenditure and their children's school and college education, they did not have any savings, she said. The government removed her husband's name from the White Ration card and now only the three persons including herself and their children are in the card. Hence, the government also removed her husband's name from the existed pension scheme, who used to get the pension under the differently-abled person category. But now, the family could not even get the pension amount from the last couple of months, she added.

She said that she could not understand how to run the family. As the Coronavirus impact is high in their locality, the officials were not even allowed to take the ration for this month, she informed.

On the other hand, N Srinivasa Rao, a person who migrated from Tirupati to Guntur working as a supplier in a hotel as daily wage earner said that he is on streets now. He said that he was earning at least Rs 300 to Rs 400 per day and the hotel owner offered food for the day. He stays at small private shelters in the city.

Now, he could not even find food for even a single day and was forced to stay on the streets to feed his stomach. There are hundreds of such people in Guntur city alone. Though the government said that they will place all of them at a shelter for time being, it was not materialized.

Another daily wage labour, Sk Karimullah said that the government officials enrolled their names during the last week of March to shift them to a temporary shelter, but till now no one came.