Ongole: Long March to Home

Ongole: The 'Long March to Home' by the migrant labour continued, though there is a little to cheer for them ahead, nor is there any willingness among them to return to the places of work. The grim faced settlers walking laboriously along the highways of the State have just one goal ahead - of reaching home and be with the families. As for the future plans, they have none.

This was revealed by the labour when The Hans India interacted with them on the highways of the State. They are ill-equipped for their journey with no money or food, but in no mood to halt halfway though.

The governments are making promises to transport the migrants home, but hundreds of them are not ready to believe the officials as the process could take more and more time. That is why groups of people carrying their children and belongings are found on highways walking or cycling for hundreds of kilometers. These workers, who believe that the governments neglect them even though they live or die on the pathways, are committed to seeing the family members at home.

The Hans India interacted with over 100 people who want to go home as early as possible and took to the NH 16 and NH 565. Among these migrants, there are men, women, and teenagers from Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Jharkhand and Odisha, who work at construction sites, industries, granite quarries, and others at Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. More than a half of the people migrated for more than two years and are didn't care about their well-being by their contractors, masons or owners and even not paid the last installment of their wages.

Nearly 85 percent of the workers claimed that the local administration denied their requests for help as they have no document proofs like Aadhaar. They shared that the house owners also didn't take pity on them and forced to pay the rent or vacate the shelter from May 1. They said that they do not believe the government's claims to run special train services to send them home. Even if there are trains, they suspect that their turn to go home would take months and they cannot live till then.

The migrants said that the police are not stopping them at most of the check posts and they took alternate routes with the help of locals if they were not allowed to cross the barricades anywhere.

When asked, when they would expect to come back, more than 90 percent of them announced that they don't come back. Pyarelal of Uttar Pradesh, who became a father in January, said: "We do not have much paying opportunities in our neighbourhood and came a 1000 kilometers distant for the welfare of the family. If we stay, we could die of starvation. So if we should die, we would die at home." This bad and ugly experience teaches the lesson of a lifetime that staying at home with the family is the most important thing.

Kondru Satyavathi, a woman migrant from Srikakulam said, "We are not Jagan Babu or Chandrababu but poor migrants and that is why we cannot afford to make this long march to home as a jolly trip. If we could pay, we too book a flight from Chennai to Visakhapatnam to get all the attention of the government as the people coming from foreign lands are receiving."