No govt plan in place to keep tabs on migrant labourers reaching state
CHANDIGARH : Even as hundreds of migrant labourers are arriving in Punjab everyday from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh for paddy transplantation, the state government has no plan in place to keep tabs on them to ensure they do not add to the state’s Covid-19 tally.
Harinder Singh Lakhowal, president of a faction of the Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU), said 1.5 lakh farmhands have already reached the state and the number is likely to double in the coming days.
“Queues of luxury buses in the state’s countryside is a common sight these days. Farmers are left with no option but to use their own resources for quarantine, food and medicines for the labourers. The government has failed to come up with anything concrete to help them on this. I myself arranged labour from UP for transplantation of paddy and got their basic tests done besides providing them an isolated place to stay,” said Lakhowal.
As per an estimate of state agriculture department, nearly 10 lakh migrant labourers worked in Punjab during the previous paddy-sowing seasons. Now, the state has only 1 lakh farmhands who are engaged in potato harvest in Ludhiana, Jalandhar, Hoshiarpur, SBS Nagar and Kapurthala districts.
BS Rajewal, who heads another faction of BKU, said, “Farmers are left to fend for themselves. Now, they have to look after the health of the labourers in the middle of the pandemic.”
To deal with the problem of labour crunch, the state agriculture department has asked the farmers to adopt direct seeding rice (DSR) technique. Paddy transplantation began in the state on a slow note on Wednesday due to the shortage of labour.
Principal secretary (health) Anurag Aggarwal said 9,000 response teams working in the state to attend to those found symptomatic.
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Farmers are left with no option but to use their own resources for quarantine, food and medicines for the labourers.
HARINDER LAKHOWAL, BKU leader