Labourers at risk daily

Exposing the utter apathy of construction contractors for their labourers is Thursday’s gruesome accident. A truck ran over a group of labourers sleeping on the Kundli-Manesar-Palwal (KMP) expressway in Haryana’s Bahadurgarh area, killing four of them and injuring 10 others. The workers, mostly poor migrants from Uttar Pradesh, used to sleep near the site where a bridge was being repaired. While the truck driver is culpable, the contractor is guilty of not providing his staff some safe, even makeshift, facility to spend the night peacefully.

The importance of labour to the industry and especially the construction sector — it employs around 40 million workers in India — was evident after the pandemic-induced curbs began to get lifted. The 2020 exodus of migrant labourers to their hometowns had left the wheels of the industry jammed. Many an employer wooed them back with incentives, such as higher wages and even plane tickets. However, their condition largely remains pathetic as they comprise the unorganised sector, which is marked by a rather casual approach to ensuring proper working and living conditions for them and their families as mandated by the law. The near-absence of protective gear for the poor construction workers undertaking risky and accident-prone work is clear from the frequent fatal incidents reported. Ten workers were killed when an under-construction tunnel collapsed on the Jammu-Srinagar highway in Ramban on Thursday night. Those cleaning sewers risk death every time they enter the pits without safety apparatus.

As these people depend on daily wages to keep their homes and hearths running, delaying their payments — a common complaint — is another grave offence. Any injury sustained at work or loss of life means not only the loss of the earning member but also additional medical expenses. A regular audit of the construction contractors is needed to ensure that the workers get health, safety and welfare-related provisions. Any lapse in this regard must be dealt with severely.

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