Kolkata: The majority of the 138 labourers who returned to the city Monday from Jammu and Kashmir after a 46-hour train journey, said they will eventually have to make their way back to the Valley for making ends meet.
Alighting from a single coach that accommodated all of them, the workers – employed mainly in plyboard factories, apple orchards – said they will keenly follow the developments in newly-formed Union Territory, and wait for the right time to return for employment again.
The group hailing from West Bengal and Assam was brought back by the Jammu Tawi Express at the initiative of the West Bengal government, after five labourers from the state were gunned down in a terror attack in Kulgam last month.
An elderly person from the team that comprised mostly young men, said he worked for 20 years in a plyboard factory in Kashmir.
“There has been tension in the Valley earlier as well, but we have never had to come back like this,” 46-year-old Abul Kalam from Kushmandi in Dakshin Dinajpur district, told this agency.
Kalam informed that the security forces arranged for their travel to Jammu station from their respective workplaces.
Walking barefoot on the platform and managing a smile despite the long journey, Kalam said he was asked to go back to his native place by his employers. “Despite the risks involved, we will have to go back to the Valley for earning a livelihood. There is no other option,” he said.
Some of the workers, however, said they were against returning to their former work place, and would try to eke out a living back home.
But the majority opined differently. “We come from poor families and have very little land at home. I will go back when the situation normalises,” said Shahabuddin Sheikh, who used to work in one of the several plyboard factories in Kashmir, and earned Rs 18,000 per month.
“I cannot earn that much in my native village,” the 27-year old, who has parents, wife and two children to take care of, added.
PTI
