Migrants starve because of One Nation, One Ration irregularities

Stranded Workers Action Network has released a report saying 82% of these workers had had at best two days of rations, while 76 % had at most Rs 200 left with them

People wait for cooked food distributed by volunteers in New Delhi last month: PTI

Basant Kumar Mohanty   |   TT  |  New Delhi   |   05.07.21: Guna Nayak, a migrant labourer in Delhi, says he will never forget the month of May when he and his wife often had to skip dinner.

With the city in lockdown then, Nayak was confined to his one-room lodgings in Kotla Mubarakpur. He had no ration card entitling him to subsidised food.

Nor, fearful of catching Covid, would he join the free-meal queues at the Delhi government’s distribution centres.

“We had limited rations and no money. Whoever I called for help had similar problems. My wife and I had to skip dinner some days,” Nayak said.

Nayak, who is from Kendrapada district in Odisha, has begun getting work after the lockdown was lifted two weeks ago. But his efforts to secure a ration card from the Delhi government have not borne results.

The state authorities refused to accept his bank statement as address proof and insisted that he furnish both his and his wife’s Aadhaar cards instead. Since his wife’s Aadhaar card bears an Odisha address, the couple have been denied a ration card, Nayak said.

Under the central government’s One Nation One Ration (Onor) Card scheme, migrant workers can obtain subsidised rations in whichever state they work. But the Delhi government is yet to implement the Onor scheme.

A civil society group, the Stranded Workers Action Network (Swan), has released a report about the suffering of lockdown-hit migrant labourers.

It says that 1,396 worker groups made up of 8,023 migrant labourers contacted it between April 21 and May 31 for help.

About 82 per cent of these workers had had at best two days of rations left when they spoke to Swan, while 76 per cent had at most Rs 200 left with them.

About 34 per cent had not been paid their pending wages for completed work, and 13 per cent had been paid only partially. Swan has provided migrant workers with a total financial assistance of Rs 33 lakh, collected through crowd-sourcing, this year.

The workers’ problems have been worse in states where the lockdown continues to be enforced.

Sameet Panda, co-convener, Odisha Khadya Adhikar Abhiyan (OKAA), said the lockdown norms had been partially relaxed in Odisha but the remaining restrictions continued to affect most residents’ food and income security.

The OKAA had on June 28 written to chief minister Naveen Patnaik seeking relief for the working class.

The letter said lakhs of ration card applications were stuck with the food supply and consumer welfare department. It demanded that all the pending applications for new ration cards or the addition of family members be accepted and the cards issued immediately.

The letter also mentioned how the lack of Aadhaar seeding was hampering biometric authentication and preventing people from securing pension or rations. One’s biometric details are stored in the Aadhaar database.

“We have been receiving regular information that PDS and pension beneficiaries are being denied their entitlement due to lack of Aadhaar seeding,” the OKAA letter said.

“The majority of these right-holders are differently abled, aged or chronically ill persons, who require immediate support. We demand that no rights-holder is denied their entitlement for non-seeding of Aadhaar.”