Lured with extra earnings landed in trouble

Lured with extra earnings and many other job benefits, people leave for far off places to work and end-up landing in big trouble. Such is the case with about 150 persons of Patrapur in Orissa who are living a helpless life as they are confined to their work place and factories in Sudan.

Villagers of Patrapur allege that some of their young men were sent to Sudan by a contractor of  Kerala and by one Bhabani Construction to engage them in construction work of a 500 megawatt power transmission plant in February 2011. The condition was that they will receive remuneration of Rupees 15000 on monthly basis and other benefits like one off-day in a week, free lodging & boarding facility, free health treatment, insurance coverage, and 8 hours of working shift. A medical check-up of these people was conducted at Calcutta before they left the country.

Though five months have already passed since then, they are yet to receive their salary. The pathetic part is that the money spent on their passage fare was deducted from their salary while the condition was that the company will bear their passage-fare. “As the workers started protesting against this highhandedness of the management, they were put to all sort of harassment and they were tortured ruthlessly,” said S. Rabindra over phone to his in-laws.

When situation aggravated and the behavior of management was no longer tolerant, workers started protests and boycott the work. Being infuriated by such drastic steps taken by the workers, they were forced to continue the work at gunpoint. However, when the apathy continued the workers stopped the work since last Thursday.

Regarding this traumatic situation S. Rabindra Yadav from Jayantipur village telephoned his family members asking them for help. He told that, “practically the workers are imprisoned here .Please  request government officials to help them out and take them out from this dungeon.”