Hyderabad: Following liquidation of a construction company called Hasan Juma Backer Trading and Contracting in Muscat, as many as 600 employees have not been paid a full year’s salary.
Around 45 employees were from Telangana. On Thursday morning, around 11 employees arrived in Hyderabad on an Air India flight from Oman; others had arrived earlier. The migrant workers from Telangana have filed a case in the labour court in Muscat with the help of the Indian Embassy, demanding they be paid their wages.
M. Bheem Reddy, president of the Emigrants Welfare Forum, told Deccan Chronicle, “Around 45 employees who were working in the construction company were not paid for more than a year. They approached the labour court in Muscat to get their dues cleared on a priority basis. The standard procedure when a company goes into liquidation is to give priority to the banks that gave loans to the company. But the first priority should be given to the employees with the help of whom the company ran for these many years.”
V. Ravi, 38, who migrated to Muscat from Kamareddy 10 years ago, told this newspaper: “I worked in the same company for 10 years. For the last one year they have not paid us any salary. I have to get around Rs 2.5 lakh and 10 years’ bonus money. They left us in a camp and assured us they would provide a flight ticket home; we stayed in that camp for eight months.”
He said there was a shortage of food and drinking water and NGOs and other organisations would provide them rice and vegetables. He wants the state government to help the workers recover their dues.
Narendra Panneru, convener of Oman Telangana Friends, a social group, helped the migrants. The government paid each of the 11 returnee workers Rs 1,000 for local travel charges.
