Rlys urges states to send back labourers

NEW DELHI: Indian Railways is in talks with states to bring back labourers for construction work on its biggest infrastructure projects—the dedicated freight corridors.

The project implementation agency, the Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India Limited (DFCCIL), which had been left with about 50% of its workforce after the lockdown for Covid-19 was enforced on March 25, has begun the process of getting back nearly 20,000 labourers, officials said.

DFCCIL has sought help from state governments including those of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand to arrange workers for the ~81,000 crore project, scheduled to be completed by 2021, officials aware of the development said. DFCCIIL has begun booking special trains in bulk and deploying buses to get the labourers back.

“We had nearly 40,000 labourers working for us before the lockdown. After the first lockdown was announced, a bulk of migrants went back in the first 15 days. Once the Shramik Special trains began plying, nearly 50% of our workforce had gone back. We have major agencies including L&T, Tata, GMR group etc who requested us to get the labour back. We have written to the UP government, we are also talking to the governments of Bihar and Jharkhand for the same as a majority of the workers come from the eastern states,” said Anurag Sachan, managing director, DFCCIL.

Railways until now has transported more than 6.28 million migrants on board 4,594 Shramik

Special trains that began plying from May 1 to ferry stranded migrants to their home states.

“So far around 8,000 labourers have returned and we are arranging transportation for more to return. Several of the special trains that are plying were returning nearly empty, we managed to make bookings in bulk for the labourers. States like UP and Bihar have also made of the migrants and their skills and we are in touch with them. At present we are still at 50% of our total workforce,” Sachan added.

These workers are needed for technical jobs which cannot be done by local labour. Around 11,000 workers of the total workforce were skilled labour, officials said.

The ministry of railways is implementing two dedicated freight corridors, namely the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor from Ludhiana to Dankuni (1,856 km.) and Western Dedicated Freight Corridor from Dadri to Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (1m504 km.). These corridors are targeted to be completed in phases by December 2021. DFCCIL had completed a total of 500 kms till January this year.

The railway ministry last month said the trend of migrants returning by special trains from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal --states with a high migrant worker population – showed signs of economic activity picking up.

Special trains returning from high migrant population states have shown over 100% occupancy from June 26 till June 30, according to railway ministry data, indicating that many of them may be migrants who had gone back to their home states on Shramik Specials during the lockdown.