Forty people crammed in a house that can accommodate only six to seven people, with all of them sharing a single toilet. This is how migrant workers are living near the Devasom Board Junction near Nanthancode in one of the residential areas of Thiruvananthapuram city.
The plight of the workers, who don’t complain for fear of losing their jobs, was exposed in an inspection conducted by the health department of the City Corporation on Sunday morning. The living conditions of the workers from other states were found to be equally miserable at Kuravankonam and Muttada as well.
The inspection was carried by health inspectors as a part of the Corporation’s pre-monsoon cleaning drive. The three are prime areas of the city where posh, palatial houses and apartments apart from government and private offices are located.
“At the house near the Devaswom Board Junction, the kitchen is near the toilet and the premises are extremely dirty with flies everywhere, and even snakes. All of them urinate in a pit dug for that purpose. At Muttada, 60 workers have been housed in a two-storey building that can accommodate maximum 20 people. They are all workers in a hotel, we have contacted the hotel owner to shift the excess people to other places. At Kuravankonam, the workers, who have been hired for the construction of a flat, are living in a tin-roofed house without even the basic facilities,” Health Inspector SS Minu told TNM.
The owners of the houses have been issued notices to clean up the houses and premises.
However, what is strange is that the workers are not aware of the exact details of the agents who hired them.
“We are trying to trace the agents and they will be issued notices once they are identified. The workers are not aware of the details, they just mention them as ‘bhais’. What we realised was that the labourers don’t speak up for fear of losing their jobs and it looks like they don’t think of better living conditions than this. We have informed the Mayor about it and inspections will be carried out in other parts of the city as well. Hopefully the Labour department also will take some measures to better the living conditions of migrant workers after they read through the inspection reports,” Minu added.