Hyderabad: Daily wagers hit hard

Hyderabad: Even as unlock was announced, there is no respite for daily wage labourers who still stand for hours at nakas looking for some employment. The daily wages have also come down considerably for manual labourers at various labour addas in City as there are less construction works going on due to pandemic.

The Covid-19 outbreak had a cascading effect on small and all construction works in the city because of the migrant workers returning to their native places. The local labourers include construction workers, mason, centering workers, painters, plastering, plumbers, working in hotels for daily wage etc. who are forced to return home handed.

The labour addas in areas like Chandrayangutta, Hafez Baba Nagar, Edi Bazar, Phisalbanda, Hari Bowli, Bahadurpura, Mehdipatnam, Tolichowki, Attapur, Karwan, Balapur and various parts of the city are filled with daily wage workers waiting for hours.

"In the three months of lockdown we were affected badly and even now after the lockdown has been lifted there is no work, and we are starving," said Ravi a construction labourer at Hafez Baba Nagar.

This pandemic crisis has also brought down our daily wages, a mason who used to get Rs 600 for 8 hrs is now paid Rs 400 per day," he added.

Besides, masonry the wages for centering workers have also been reduced, earlier, they used to get 1,000 per day are getting Rs 600," said G Babu a centering worker at Edi Bazar. He and his spouse who is also a daily wager used t0 earn around Rs 20,000 rupees per month are hardly able to make Rs 10,000, he added.

During lockdown, NGOs and Samaritans used to distribute food and ration packs and even the government gave some finances and had distributed ration kits.

But now all these charity work has been stopped after lockdown norms were relaxed.

Female labourer Yadeyaamma alleged that since the lockdown, she had not received any help from the government, even had not received Rs 500 or 15 Kg rice. She said she had been looking for work but there are no works and it's a rainy season, no one is constructing houses or doing any repair work which is affecting labourers a lot," she said.

Apart from construction workers, the plumbers, painters, hotel workers have also been affected.