THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: With the failure of the labour and police departments to register the lakhs of migrant workers in the state, the labour department is planning to set up help desks at railway stations to collect the details of migrants.
Though the labour department had even recommended mandatory registration of migrants, the government has done nothing even as incidents of law and order problems involving migrants keep on escalating.
According to a recent study, there are about 25 lakh migrant workers in Kerala, majority of them from Bengal, Bihar, Assam and Chhattisgarh.
However, only around 50,000 were enrolled in a welfare scheme for migrants initiated by the labour department. Many from Bangladesh are also reportedly among the migrant workforce in the state.
Over these years, migrant workers were involved in a series of crimes, including the recent murder of three members of a family in Kottayam and a bank robbery at Kovalam. There were even incidents of fake currency smuggling and drug peddling cases involving migrant workers.
“Since our efforts to register the migrants have not yet yielded any result, we are now planning to set up help desks at railway stations so that migrants could be enrolled as soon as they reach the state. The help desks would also provide assistance to migrant workers,” said additional labour commissioner A. Alexander.
Though the police had initiated an effort to register migrant works, it is also yet to become effective.
“Many police stations maintain a data base of migrants, but it is not fool-proof as the migrant labourers are a floating population. One remedy is to introduce a labour card system for migrants and make it mandatory for working in Kerala,” said IG Ernakulam-range, M.R. Ajith Kumar.
