New Delhi: The Supreme Court yesterday slammed the Odisha government for turning a blind eye to the plight of migrant workers being taken to other states by unscrupulous contractors or middlemen on the promise of good jobs but who were exploited and living in sub-human conditions.
The court described the situation in Odisha regarding the plight of migrant workers as “andhergardhi”.
A bench of Justice T S Thakur, Justice C Nagappan and Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel said this as the Odisha government confirmed a report of the chopping off of the hands of two migrant workers from the state by a brick kiln contractor in Andhra Pradesh.
The court had on January 27 taken suo motu cognisance of a newspaper report about the chopping off of the workers’ hands.
The report said an Andhra Pradesh-based labour contractor and his four henchmen allegedly chopped off the hands of the two migrant workers in December 2013 after they refused to work in a brick kiln in Chhattisgarh.
The court asked the Odisha government if the labour contractor who took the workers was unlicensed, and as it was a cognisable offence, what was the action taken by it.
“There is a possibility of a larger exploitation of the poor people. You don’t need to wait for newspaper reports to act,” the court said. IANS
