Correspondent
PASIGHAT, Apr 2: Families of hundreds of daily wage earners and labourers here in East Siang district are facing a tough time after their main breadwinners became jobless because of the 21-day nationwide lockdown.
The worst sufferers are manual labourers, masons, plumbers, carpenters, autorickshaw drivers, motor mechanics, hawkers and vegetable vendors, who are struggling to feed their families as they are left without work all of a sudden.
The vegetable farmers are also facing the same problem. The farm produces have started to rot after the closure of the markets.
Former minister Bosiram Siram lamented that the government has not done enough to mitigate the sufferings of the labourers.
He said while the central government has announced a number of relief schemes for the poor and the destitute, the relief packages are yet to reach the targeted beneficiaries.
“The government neither supplied free food nor made ex gratia payment to the hard-hit families to overcome the crisis,” Siram said over telephone.
The central government’s financial services department has ordered the SBI and other public and private sector banks to transfer Rs 500 through DBT to women PMJDY account holders under the PM Garib Kalyan package in light of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The government has asked the bank authorities to deposit the amount in the accounts of women Jan Dhan Yojana beneficiaries for the current month.
The financial services department has also issued instruction to the bank authorities to ensure phase-wise disbursement of the money from 3 to 9 April.
The amount released under the package is to be deposited in the PMJDY beneficiaries’ accounts for three consecutive months.
