Post News Network
Rourkela, Nov 20: In a departure from the current trend of urban middle class people falling for oily and spicy food, several office goers here still prefer home cooked food for lunch at their workplaces.
This helps nearly hundred dabbawallas for years to make a living out of it.
Much like their Mumbai counterparts, the dabbawallas here collect fresh food from the homes of several Rourkela Steel Plant employees and deliver them at various sections of the plant. The summer heat or winter chill or torrential rain never deter their spirits. The dabbawallas get anything between Rs 300 to Rs 350 per month for each delivery.
Special carriers are seen attached to bicycles and a person can deliver 30 to 40 lunch boxes a day. Most of the lunch boxes are collected from areas like Sectors 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 16, 17, 18, 19 and 20.
The dabbawallas set out for their work at about 10 am every day and collect the boxes within two hours. They assemble either at Main gate or Bania gate of the plant. The boxes are distributed among dabbawallas as per their points of deliveries. They visit from one department to another and deliver the boxes by 1 pm.
After distributing the tiffin boxes, they have their lunch and again collect the empty boxes after 2 pm.
However, the number of dabbawallas has been on the decline reflecting the fall in the number of personnel at RSP. About 300 dabbawallas used to work when the plant became operational which has come down to 80 at present, a report said, adding each dabbawalla then delivered about 70 boxes.
Mitu Deep, a lunch box carrier who has been in the business for 15 years, said, “Our earnings have been hit as the number of staff has dropped in the plant.”
“I have been doing this from 1986. Then I got Rs 10 per month for each delivery and these days I make Rs 350,” another dabbawalla Ananda Barik said.
Some other carriers like Gopi Suna, Sudam Nanda and Chaitanya Mallik said they deliver 25 to 30 lunch boxes a day and earn about Rs 8,000 a month from this. PNN
