Death merely added salt to their injuries

Mostly hailing from Orissa and Andhra Pradesh, the labourers live, often with their families, in small hutments on the salt pans. Each salt pan and factory has at least 100 workers. They work on contracts, without unions and labour laws, without government inspections. They don’t exist ondocuments or government records, they just work and live here.

“Only the agents know how many are working in a particular salt pan; no record or register is maintained. Sometimes, when a worker falls into a well in a salt pan and dies, few know his name or where he hails from — least of all the owner of the pan,” said an official at the Salt Commissionerate.

Which is why the district administration is unable to even make an approximate estimate of the deaths in Kandla. And no one is ever likely to know as the bodies were carried by receding waters into the deep sea. Officials say, they could be thousands. “The government may claim that the number is not that big, but no one can say for sure that more haven’t died,” said a senior relief official.

The life of a salt pan worker is a story of miseries: Poverty, illness and more poverty. Due to constant exposure to salt and its residual brine, the workers develop deformities.

“Sometimes they have to undergo amputations,” says O P Meena,superintendent at the Salt Commissionarate at Gandhidham.

A worker becomes useless once he is amputated. “His work is very demanding right from the process of salt making to loading and unloading. As they are on contract, no compensation, however, little is paid,” says an official. So when the father can’t go to work, the children are forced into the salt pans.

Kevalchand Nahata, president of the Gandhidham Salt Traders Association, says some manufacturers provide shoes to workers moving in the brine, “but only to those who are permanent.” The others, he says, “simply rub some sort of grease on their feet to save themselves from chemical reactions.”

Migrant labourers have a huge labour colony near Kandla, having a population of about 30,000. They live in temporary hutments with absolutely no civic amenities — not even drinking water.

“We allow some permanent employees to live inside the factory premises, but it is difficult to accommodate all,” says a salt manufacturer. “Most of them maketheir own arrangements, usually hutments made of tarpaulin and tin-sheet roofs,” he adds.

Now, after the calamity, thousands of salt workers are fleeing Kandla and Gandhidham on whatever mode of transport available, with just the clothes they are wearing. Many will never return. Not even to look for the bodies of their dear ones.

Cyclone toll may cross 1,000-mark, fears Advani

AHMEDABAD: Home Minister L K Advani, who visited the cyclone-hit areas of Gujarat on Thursday, said in the Rajya Sabha today that the total casualty may cross the four-figure mark and assured members that a Central team would visit the affected parts in the next three or four days.

Meanwhile, massive relief, rescue and rehabilitation operations were underway on a war-footing with assistance of the army and air force in the 12 cyclone-battered districts of the State even as the toll mounted to 716.