At an under-construction tunnel of Pune Metro. (Express photo)
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Of the over 2,800 labourers working for the Pune Metro project in Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad, nearly 1,600 have left for their home states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar Jharkhand and West Bengal in the last 15 days, since Shramik Special trains and buses started plying. But officials of Maha-Metro, the implementing agency for the project, said Metro work will continue despite the departure of hundreds of workers.
“The work will slow down for sure. But we will not stop the work, it will continue,” Maha-Metro spokesperson Hemant Sonawane told The Indian Express on Thursday.
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Maha-Metro officials said they tried to convince the workers to stay back, but they refused to do so. “We held several round of meetings with them. We urged them to stay as Metro had ensured all facilities for them, besides taking care of their health. We even urged them to go back in batches… however, they refused to heed our pleas. We don’t know the exact reason but we guess… they wanted to be with their loved ones at this point of time,” said Sonawane.
Metro work in Pune had come to a complete halt when the nationwide lockdown was imposed on March 25, and it eventually started again on April 30.
“The contractors are trying to get in touch with labourers who are already at their native places. They are hopeful of getting some labourers back after more trains start plying after June 1…,” said Sonawane.
He said there were no issues pertaining to labourers’ salaries. “We have ensured that the labour contractors make full payments to the workers. If that was not the case, the labourers would not have remained with us for the first 40-45 days of the lockdown,” said Sonawane.
He said several arrangements were made for the workers during the lockdown. “Medical check-ups of the labourers were conducted regularly at the camps… they were provided recreational facilities like TV sets, carrom boards and chess boards. Mask and sanitisers were distributed and social distancing norms were strictly implemented. As a result, not a single labourer was detected with coronavirus,” said Sonawane.
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Metro officials, however, said they weren’t looking to hire labourers locally. “This is because local workers usually avoid construction work…,” said a Metro official, adding that the agency will wait for the return of labourers who have gone back home.
Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades.
Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives.
Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees.
During Covid, over 50 doctors were asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa.
Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died.
Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More
