Daily wagers bear brunt of lockdown

LAHORE :Sitting on a footpath along a busy road for hours and running a sprint race to get any kind of help in case a car stops near them is a daily routine of a large number of manual labourers in the provincial metropolis.

“Some day I get a little help and some day I get nothing,” said Mustafa Ahmed, a resident of Chungi Amarsadhu. He is a paint worker by profession and since when the Covid-19 pandemic hit the city he has no work to do. “My life depends on my daily income but nowadays I am earning nothing,” he said adding in early days of pandemic he and his family passed two days without eating anything and then one day a car stopped near me on road and a young woman gave me a bag of ration containing a flour bag, some packs of pulses, a bag of sugar, a bag of oil and a bag of rice. He said that bag ended in five to six days and now again he daily comes on the road thinking may be the Almighty send an angel again for his help.

On the other hand, Khurram, a resident of Faisal Town, said that he wanted to go out to help deserving people but his wife stopped him and showed him several videos which were viral on internet that gangs of labourers are looting cars who stopped to help them. He said that the government should take notice of such videos and the situation and in case if these videos are original then those looting people should be provided ration on priority while police also increase its patrolling near the spots where such labourers usually sit.

The estimated number of manual labourers working in the provincial metropolis cannot be calculated exactly as a rickshaw driver, a motor mechanic, a salesman and people working in many other categories depend on daily wages, said a senior officer of district government’s social welfare department.

He said as the country grapples with the rise in Covid-19 cases, people have been forced to remain indoors but the worst affected are the daily-wagers and other labourers.

The lockdown has robbed daily-wagers of their daily income as they said they had no food to feed themselves and their families. Many workers wanted to left the city but can’t travel due to high fares as well as empty pockets.

He said thousands of people worked in various city markets, including Akbari Mandi, Shah Alam Market, Jewellers Market, Goods transport companies, Hall Road, Bedien Road, Montgomery Road Motorcycle Market, Jail Road Car showrooms, birds and animals shops in Tollinton Market, Anarkali Bazaar, Cycle Market Neela Gumbad, Landa Bazaar, Banson Wala Bazaar, Shoe Market, Azam Cloth Market, Railway Station, Brandreth Road, Mughalpura Motorcycle Market, Liberty Market, Hafeez Centre, Main Market Gulberg, Barkat Market, GT Road, Daroghawala, Shalimar Link Road, Samanabad Car Market, Multan Road, Raiwind Road, Ichhra Bazaar, Ferozepur Road and etc.

On the other hand, hundreds of thousands of minor labourers, who are part of Lahore’s informal economy, are also among those who are badly affected by the lockdown and cannot even ask for financial aid from the government officially due to their age.

In reality, majority of the citizens termed social distancing a luxury that they can’t afford. Many face hunger and starvation in the absence of daily wages that have been disrupted the city as well as the entire country.

Though recently, Prime Minister Imran Khan has announced a relief package to help the country’s poorest people but unfortunately the biggest catch in this is that no district governments across the province have complete data about the workforce as well as the citizens by their profession.

PM Imran Khan also established a Tiger Force but the big question is that how the tiger force will find the deserving and what will be the criteria to be in the list of deserving citizens. A senior official of District Government Lahore seeking anonymity said that there is no formula as well as data to be followed for funds distribution. He revealed that the PTI government has asked their local teams in every UC to give names of 20 deserving citizens for distribution of funds. Now it is up to the will of the local PTI worker to decided who is deserving and who is not.

As per the PM’s announcement, every poor family will get Rs12,000 financial help for a month, which only Rs400 per day per family and if a normal family comprised of over six persons it means every family member will get Rs66.66 per day.

Awais Ahmed, a rickshaw driver, said he lived in a rented house and his rickshaw was on bank installment. He said he didn’t know how to survive in Rs12,000 only for a month. He said he usually earned over Rs40,000 per month. He demanded the government ask the banks to defer the installments of rickshaws so that people like him could get a little relief. Zubaida, a house maid, said that she didn’t have a CNIC, she went to the UC where she lives and from there she was told that there is no way that she can prove that she is among the poorest of the poor covered by government assistance. She said she had five children and her husband had died some four years back and she didn’t have any other source of income.

The scribe has witnessed a large number of auto rickshaw drivers, motor mechanics, daily vendors who sell snacks approaching well-off persons or people sitting in cars on city roads and asking for help with wet eyes.

“This crisis shines a torch on the fragilities of our system and it is the right time we can reconstruct it as well as collect exact data about our workforce,” said Murtaza Ch, a public policy expert.

He said shutting down a country like us for longer periods would be difficult, given the poverty levels prevalent across the country. He said there is a big question that from where the government is going to get the money to handle the situation in case of an extension in the prevailing lockdown. “It is important to identify the hotspots during this lockdown and reopen the remaining parts of the economy while finding ways to work within this pandemic,” he suggested.