The Modi government on Monday claimed in Lok Sabha that it does not know how many migrant workers died during the COVID-19 pandemic while returning to their native places.
In reply to a written question, Minister of State for Labour and Employment Santosh Kumar Gangwar said that it does not have any record of deaths of migrant workers during the COVID -19 pandemic. “No such data is maintained,” the written reply said.
In reply to another question related to the assessment of job losses among migrant workers, the Minister said the govt did not have any assessment of job losses of migrant labour during the pandemic.
When asked “whether the government has provided any compensation/economic assistance to the victim’s family”, the government said, “Question does not arise”, since it had no records of such migrant workers in the first place.
However, on the number of the total number of migrants who returned to their home states, the Minister presented state wise data and said, “More than 63.07 lakh migrants shifted to various destinations during the pandemic”. 4611 Shramik Special Trains were run for returning migrants, the Minister added.
A report published by international news agency Reuters says nearly 200 migrant workers were killed on roads during the coronavirus lockdown while trying to get back home, while as per data collected by SaveLIFE Foundation, an NGO working on road safety, 198 migrant workers were killed in road accidents as of 2 June 2020.
As far as loss of job is concerned, according to an International Labour Organisation (ILO) report, 40 crore informal sector workers in India may have been pushed deeper into poverty due to loss of livelihood arising from the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown.
According to an estimate, 12.2 crore people have lost their jobs due to the COVID-19 pandemic in India. Almost 75% of these were small traders and wage-labourers.
Further, private think tank Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) has in a recently released report said that as many as 50 lakh salaried people lost their jobs in the month of July, taking the total tally of those who lost jobs in the segment since April to 1.89 crore. CMIE calculated that 1.77 crore salaried jobs were lost in April – the first full month that witnessed the Coronavirus-induced lockdown.
