Odia tribal girl’s courage saves over 6k workers

A 19-year-old tribal girl from Odisha’s Bolangir district turned out to be a messiah for many guest workers who were stuck in Tamil Nadu due to Covid-19 lockdown.

Manasi Bariha helped free over 6,000 workers trapped in brick kilns of Tamil Nadu.

She alerted her relatives about her owner’s brutal attack on workers wanting to return to their hometown during the lockdown.

Manasi along with 355 other workers hailing from Odisha’s Bolangir, Nuapada and Kalahandi districts was working at GDM brick kiln in Pudhukuppam in Tiruvallur. The owner had sourced the labourers through an agent using cash advances.

Manasi’s family comprising her father and younger sister had taken an advance of `28,000 in order to pay off their debts incurred for medical expenses of her late mother.

The labourers were working at the kiln for six months without any facilities and on wages as low as `250 a week.

After the announcement of lockdown, the worried labourers approached the kiln owner, who had promised to release them if they completed the targeted number of bricks within a week. All the labourers put in their best to complete the targeted number of bricks.

However, when they approached the owner after completion of the work, he refused to let them go. The owner allegedly used his men to pull the workers out of their shanties at the kiln and forced them to work.

On May 18, when the workers protested, the owner and his men reportedly thrashed them. The situation worsened when the workers started packing their luggage to return home. To stop them the owner’s men attacked them with lathis.

“Some were left grievously injured and needed urgent medical attention. They broke the ribs of one of the workers while many received head injuries,” recalls Manasi, who mustered courage and escaped to a safe space from where she made frantic calls for help.

“I called up almost all the numbers on my mobile and shared the photos, audios and videos of the injured men with my WhatsApp contacts appealing for urgent help. I knew that the owner would not take us to the hospital and some might die due to excess bleeding,” she said. Soon after, the pictures surfaced on social media, one of Manasi’s acquaintances reached out to a voluntary organisation.

The organisation quickly contacted Tiruvallur district administration and legal authorities to rescue the labourers expeditiously. A complaint was lodged against the kiln owner. While the accomplices of the owner were arrested, owner Munuswami managed to abscond.

With the TN government’s arrangements, 6,750 workers, including the 355 labourers (from the kiln in which Manasi was working) returned to their hometown in Odisha and Bihar.