Farmers go out of way to lure labourers

Aakanksha N Bhardwaj

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, June 25

Amid labour shortage due to the Covid-induced migration, farmers in the district have been adopting various means to bring back farm hands.

Besides paying high rates for paddy transplantation, farmers have also been acceding to other demands of the labourers. While some have arranged for train tickets for them, some others have gone to receive the labourers at the railway station. Some even had to go to their villages in UP and Bihar on their vehicles to bring them.

Davinder Singh, a farmer from Nawanshahr, had arranged tickets for eight labourers who reached here around five days ago.

“I went to the Phagwara railway station to receive the labourers. I had never booked tickets for them ealier. But the present situation is so grave that nobody wants to leave any stone unturned to woo the farm hands,” said Singh.

Kirpal Singh from the Shahkot area said he had convinced labourers who had arrived here during the sugarcane season in November to stay. “I had no other option but to convince them to stay here because I knew if they move back to their native places, the work would stop here,” he said, adding that to convince the farm hands to stay here was not an easy task.

Some farmers have also been going on tempo travellers to UP to get farm labourers for paddy transplantation. “This is the only option left with us to ensure that the work of sowing paddy doesn’t get stopped,” said a one such farmer.