MIGRANT LABOURERS

                                            MIGRANT LABOURERS

   Some 10 lakh to 30 lakh migrant labourers take up skilled or semi- skilled work in Kerala. The migrant labourers include construction workers,casual labourers,road workers,semi skilled carpenders, masons, plumbers, electricians and agricultural workers. The State Bank of India, Kowdiar branch most sundays has to open additional cash counters to meet the demand of migrant labourers. There are usually 300 to 400 customers on that day. They come from various worksites in thiruvananthapuram city to send their weekly savings home- in West Bengal,Orissa, Bihar,Jharkhand, Chhattisgrah,Assam and other north-eastern parts of India. The money is deposited in a relative's or friend's account so that it can be withdrawn without delay" The weekly migrant labourer remittances have ranged from Rs 2000 to Rs. 10,000 per head The Bank Manager said the migrant labour remittances through the brach was nearly Rs 15 lakh every Sunday.

  In Perumbavoor, 35 km from Kochi in central Kerala, is a town dominated by veneer and plywood units, sawmills, a large number of small industrial units- and migrant labourers. There are over 175 plywood factories in and  around the town that give" direct employement to over 15,000 mi9grant labourers, traders. there is a theatre in Perumbavoor that screens only Oriya movies. Even the advertisements are in the Oriya language. For many of the local residents, they are an uncomfortable presence in the town's shopping centres on Saturdays and Sundays. You find them with newly bought household goods and gifts on every train that goes to north-estern India. There are shops and restaurants catering almost exclusively to the migrants.Many small restaurants display the menu in several languages".
   The Post office in Perumbavvor is well known for being one of the top money order remittance centres in India. In Mondays and Tuesdays's,with 1,000 to 1,200 migrants waiting queue to remit their earnings.Many of them depost between Rs 25,000 and Rs 75,000 every week.
   The industrial belt in Palakkad and  the Jewellery sweatshops of Thrissur district,and the agricultural tracts in Wayanad and Idukki have all for long employed non- Kerala labourers on a large scale. There are an estimated 40,000 or so gold jewellery makers in Thrissur, and major chunk of them are highly skilled workers from northern States.
  There are no official etimates of the number of migrant workers entering or living in Kerala. Unofficial estimates vary from 10 lakh to 30 lakh. On May1,2010, Kerala became the first State in India to institute welfare scheme for migrant labourers. The Migrant Labours Welfare Scheme, 2010 provides every migrant labourer who joins the scheme paying an annual fee of Rs.30, among other thinbgs, Rs. 25,000 as health care assistance Rs.25,000 as terminal benefit if he has worked in Kerala for a minimum period,up to Rs.3,000 every year as education allowance for their children, Rs.50,000 as compensation to the next kin if the labourer dies in an accident, Rs 10,000 in case of natural death and up Rs 15,000 for transporting the body to their hometown,in case of death in Kerala.

                                                       Prof. John Kurakar