Ajay Maken, Delhi Congress chief claimed that as many as 48.63 lakh workers will be left jobless due to the faulty implementation of Demonetisation. He also claimed that many workers have started returning to their home state because of this. Delhi Poorvanchal Congress and Delhi South Indian Congress have planned a march on December 24 from Jantar Mantar to the Parliament house. This march is a protest for the troubles faced by daily wage migrant labors in Delhi city.
Maken said, “48.63 lakh unorganized/informal workforce in Delhi consists of first-generation migrant labor. After faulty implementation of Demonetisation, reverse migration has begun in Delhi.” He also alleged that “Lakhs of laborers have already returned to their homes, and around 15,000 laborers are returning to their homes from Delhi every day, which is stalling development works in the national capital.”
Maken also claimed that on December 9, he has written to Delhi CM Aravind Kejriwal in regard to this issue. But he hasn’t received any reply as of yet for gaining attention to the reverse migration of labor. Maken also said that the Delhi Government has not taken any steps to implement his suggestion that Rs. 5,000 be provided to each laborer per month as a compensation and stop from migrating back.
Many important projects have come to a halt in Delhi as laborers are not getting their daily wages due to the cash crunch. Also, because of a cash crunch, people have stopped taking rickshaws, which has considerably brought down the daily earning of rickshaw pullers. He claimed that “If steps are not taken immediately to stop the reverse migration of the informal workforce, it will take a long time for Delhi to come back to its normal routine.”
The BJP government has issued that all the payments to the daily labor be made through online banking. For this through Jan Dhan Yojna, they introduced zero banking accounts. Though 25 crore new users were registered from June 2014 to now many still don’t hold a permanent account, which when mixed with cash crunch is creating a huge problem to the daily wage labor.
