THE working people, especially those engaged in the informal sector in Himachal Pradesh, like in many other states, have had to pass through a tough time during the period of lockdown. The main sufferers have been outsourced workers in government departments, casual workers, part-time workers, MNREGA workers, and workers engaged in construction activities, domestic helps and hotel workers, workers engaged in lifting of garbage and cleaning sewage, porters, hawkers, street vendors and many others. The worst affected during the lockdown, however, are the construction and MNREGA workers.

A large section of the migrant workers from West Bengal, UP, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh belong to the Muslim minority community. These workers had to face economic hardships; they were also targeted by the sangh parivar and were beaten up at several places. In Barot in Mandi district, nine migrant workers from Jammu and Kashmir were beaten up and they sustained grievous injuries. In Shimla town, audio messages of three sangh activists went viral. They were asking the shopkeepers to not to allow the Muslim vendors to open their shops in the residential areas. In Hamirpur district, there were threats issued to the Muslim workers. In the same district a video of beating migrant workers went viral. The attackers include chairperson of the HP Skill Development Board and the village pradhan. In Nagrota Bagwan in Kangra district the village pradhan was involved in beating the migrant workers from Bihar.

Even distribution of ration was done in a partisan manner by some of the district authorities in the state. The ration was selectively not distributed to the Muslim migrant workers. Such reports were abundant from Shimla, Hamirpur and Kangra districts. The CITU wrote to the chief minister and the director general of police and demanded their immediate intervention. The situation was so bad that the CPI(M) legislator, Rakesh Singha had to sit on a dharna outside the SDM Shimla office for more than 30 hours to ensure that the ration is distributed to every migrant worker.

HOLLOW PROMISES
The efforts made by the state government and the district administration in many districts were mere tokenism. The government got exposed when the news came out that in a majority of the places it is the NGOs who are distributing ration to the migrant people. The CITU along with other social organisations got engaged in many places but their outreach is limited. In Himachal Pradesh, 70 per cent of the workforce is engaged in non- government or private sector. Lockdown and curfew has severely affected their livelihood. The MNREGA workers in the state are over 8.5 lakh. The much touted government’s announcement for the MNREGA workers was to mere 56,000. Similarly 1.5 lakh workers are engaged in the construction work.  10,000 construction workers got Rs 2,000 each into their accounts. According to the labour department 49,000 are registered industries  in the state, of which 80 per cent are small scale or self employed. The state has a large share of hospitality industry and the entire industry is closed. Taxi drivers, hotel workers and others engaged with this industry are sitting at home with no help from the government.

INTERVENTION OF CITU
CITU engaged with the state government and through various letters to the chief minister and the labour department, made them accountable. The CITU and construction workers federation wrote to the workers welfare board of the state for immediate release of relief to the workers. A sum of Rs 11 crore was released by the board. The CITU along with other organisations organised relief camps in 11 districts out of 12 in the state. The Lahaul and Spiti district is not reachable during this period owing to heavy snow. In Shimla, Hamirpur, Mandi, Solan, and Kangra districts thousands of food kits were distributed to the workers.  All the resources for the ration kits were generated locally by the committees. In Hamirpur district, a door to door collection of food grains was done and more than 10,000 houses were reached out and a kilogram of ration/ food grains was collected from each household.