Tiruppur: In the wake of alleged incidents of migrants workers being defrauded by middlemen in Tamil Nadu's Tiruppur city, social activists have demanded that a record should be maintained about them through online registration and a help centre be set up at the railway station for assistance.
Kongu Ramakrishnan, a social activist based in Tiruppur, said, "Details of migrant workers should be recorded through online registration and this has to be monitored regularly."
Over four lakh migrant workers from Bihar, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Jharkhand and other states are engaged in more than 20,000 knitwear companies in Tiruppur, which export Rs 40,000 crore annually and involved in domestic trade worth Rs 30,000 crore.
A few days back, an incident surfaced where a woman who had come from Odisha with her husband was allegedly sexually assaulted by three men on the pretext of getting them jobs.
Middlemen from north India bring crowds of unemployed workers from various states to Tiruppur, promising them good wages in knitwear companies. However, these middlemen allegedly rob the workers half their salaries as commission.
Incidents have also been reported of middlemen allegedly extorting money or sexually harassing migrant workers after they reach Tiruppur railway station and bus stands. There are also complaints that in some companies, the middlemen act as contractors and collect the wages on behalf of the workers but pay them much lower.
Even though the companies are aware of such irregularities, they ignore it because the work is getting done and they think that if there is any problem then the contractors will fix it themselves. As a result, the migrant workers are getting exploited by the middlemen but are unable to narrate their plight due to language barrier.
Aloysius, president of Save, a voluntary organisation for migrant workers, said, "To prevent such incidents, a help centre for migrant workers should be set up at the Tiruppur railway station."
This apart, Bangladeshis, looking for work under the guise of migrant workers and using fake identity cards, are also a common occurrence. So far, the police have arrested more than a hundred Bangladeshis posing as migrants. This raises concern over not only the safety of migrant workers but also the local residents.
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