MADURAI: A 19-year-old girl from Odisha, who was allegedly brought by a recruitment contractor to Dindigul, was tragically found dead in suspicious circumstances in a house near the town on Wednesday. While S. Thivya, general secretary of Tamil Nadu Textile and Common Labour Union claimed the girl Lakshmi Singh had died in a rented building managed by the recruitment contractor Selva Prakash in Puthupatti village, 20-km away from Dindigul, the police said she died at her relative’s house where she had stayed after reaching Dindigul. The contractor brought Lakshmi Singh from Odisha recently and kept her under his custody in the building so as to send her to work in textile mills after Deepavali, said Thivya.
“How would the girl die within three days after she reached Dindigul due to stomach pain? The authorities are trying to hide the real cause of the death,” she claimed. This incident also exposed how the helpless district administration was least bothered about the welfare of migrant labourers who were brought from various places, to work in the textile mills in the arid Dindigul district, said Thivya. As per Interstate Migrant Workmen, 1979, the co-ntractor needs to get a recruitment license from the Labour department, Odisha, before he brings her for work. He also needs to obtain employees’ license from the local Labour department before sending her to work in a mill. In this case, the contractor did not follow this procedure and he also failed to register Lakshmi Singh’s details with the district administration, alleges S James Victor, director, Serene Secular Social Service Society — SSSSS, Dindigul, an NGO addressing labour issues.
When contacted, a senior officer in the Labour department said he was not aware of this incident; instead he claimed it was the responsibility of the factory labour officials to address this issue. A police official from Vedasandur police station said that preliminary investigations revealed that she died due to food poisoning at her relative’s house. However, the mystery over the poor girl’s death is yet to be satisfactorily explained.
