Porters at Tatanagar are sitting idle most of the day as only two trains have halts at the station these days.
Only the 22823 Bhubaneswar-New Delhi Rajdhani Express and 12801 Puri-New Delhi Purshottam Express have stops in Jamshedpur. This has hit the porters hard with all of them struggling to make ends meet.
Most of the 102 porters, who are primarily from Bihar, have left for their homes. Only 35 are in Jamshedpur. “Hamari stithi bahut hi kharab hain. Kamai nahin ho rahi. Parivar kaise chalayen (Our condition is extremely bad. There is no source of income. How can we sustain our families)?” said Vinod Kumar, a porter who lives at Gwala Bustee in nearby Kitadih.
Porter Pramod Raut said they were dependent on social organisations who distributed groceries during the lockdown. But that too had stopped now. “The station manager had also arranged groceries through a social outfit once. But now the situation has changed, and we are finding it very hard to feed our families.” he added.
The porters said they used to earn between Rs 7,000 to Rs 8,000 before the lockdown. But now that has come down drastically. “Kisi din kaam milta hain kisi din nahin. Bahut mushkil se 1,500-2,000 rupya kamate hain. (Sometimes we get work and sometime not. I earn Rs 1,500-2,000 a month with great difficulty),” added Kumar.
Some of the porters are borrowing money at 10 per cent interest to get things going. “I had used up all my savings to sustain my family. The groceries I got from social outfits have also exhausted. Me and my wife eat once a day since I have to look after our two young children. Don’t know what to do,” said Jai Balak, a resident of Golpahari.
Kumar said the then railway minister, Lalu Prasad, had in 2008 recruited porters across the country in the “group category”. “However, only 85 per cent porters got inducted while the rest 20 per cent got omitted due to over-age and medical issues. The group D porters get salary and residential quarters from the railway. But we have been left out,” the 45-year-old rued.
“We hear that the railways is going to be privatised. We are already facing huge problems. We don’t know what will happen to us when the railway is actually privatised. We all are praying to the almighty,” added Chandan Mukhi, a porter who lives at Golpahari too.