Farmer spends Rs 70K on air tickets to send migrants home

NEW DELHI: The social media is flooded with news of the tragic mass exodus of migrant workers waiting to go back home. Amidst all these, there comes some positivity from a farmer of Delhi who has decided to send his labourers working on his farm to Bihar via plane.

Pappan Singh, a mushroom farmer from Tigipur village in the Capital has paid Rs 70,000 for air tickets to send 10 of his labourers back home. He has also been taking care of them for nearly two months now since the lockdown.

“I would not like to boast about it. I think every businessman in Delhi, if he is in the capacity of helping his labourers, should try to help them. What have the labourers demanded from Delhi, just some place to sleep and some food to eat,” said Singh.

For the labourers who has worked with Singh for over two decades, this means they can return to their family with dignity unlike thousands of fellow labourers who have been walking back home. This is his first air trip ever for many labourers say that no one in their village ever travelled by plane.

“I never imagined in my life I will be traveling in a plane. I don’t have words to express my happiness. But I am also nervous about what I have to do when we reach the airport tomorrow,” a labourer said.

The plane carrying Pappan Singh’s employees will leave the Delhi airport at 6 am on Thursday. They have all been screened for Coronavirus and have the medical certificates necessary for travel.

Pappan Singh has good reason to consider them part of his family — on the strength of their work he earns up to Rs 12 lakh per year from his mushroom farms. However, this noble gesture has definitely earned him a place in his labourer’s hearts.