Assam: Most jobseekers returned from Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil nadu

GUWAHATI: Migrant workers who have returned to Assam from Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala constitute the major chunk of returnees, who have registered themselves with the state government as job seekers.
About 33,000 returnee migrants have been registered by the state panchayat and rural development (P&RD) department in the gram panchayat areas of Assam, from where a maximum number of youths go out to other states in search of work.

Officials in the P&RD department, however, said including the unregistered workforce, the estimated number of the migrant workers, who have returned to the state since the lockdown was announced in March, will be not less than one lakh. Since the announcement of the nationwide lockdown in the country, over 3.5 lakh people have returned to the state and a major chunk of them are the migrant workers.
If the number of returnee migrant workers in urban areas are counted, this figure will go up further, the officials said. But considering the spike in the number of Covid-19 cases in Guwahati and its neighbourhood as well as in the town areas of the districts, which don’t fall under the jurisdiction of the P&RD department, the district authorities are facing a stiff challenge in materialising the rehabilitation plans for the migrant workers as almost the entire government machinery has been busy battling the pandemic in these areas.
Chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal also directed the deputy commissioners to identify skills of the migrant workers in their respective districts so that they can be engaged in schemes that suit their capabilities. But, a government source said, “Little progress could be achieved in employing the returnee migrant workers in the urban pockets of the state, including Guwahati city, which have been under lockdown.”
The P&RD department has started issuing new job cards under the MGNREGA since April, as the migrant workers struggle to make ends meet.
“The P&RD department is registering the migrant workers in 26 districts, leaving out the urban areas. Currently, the data is being physically collected from the panchayat level and then entered in the official tally. The collection of data going on in the ground level may be higher,” J B Ekka, principal secretary of the P&RD department, told TOI on Monday.
According to the overall data of migrant workers complied since June last year, total 32,934 registered migrant workers have returned to the state, but the flow of the returnee workers gained momentum from March onwards during the Covid crisis.