271 Odia migrants detained in TN kiln rescued Thursday, 28 May 2020 | AJIT PANDA | NUAPADA

 A total of 271 persons of 78 migrant families including 64 children from Nuapada, Kalahandi and Balangir districts, forcefully detained by Binod Chamber Brick kiln in Athur village under Ponneri Taluk in Thiruvallur district, Tamilnadu were rescued by a group of activists/journalists with the help of International Justice Mission (IJM) on Sunday.

The rescue operation began on Sunday morning by IJM in the presence of the local administration of Thiruvallur district and by evening all the detained workers were shifted to a temporary shelter in Red hills under the care and protection of Government agencies. The operation by IJM began, when a tweet about the plight of workers in the brick kiln, posted by this correspondent on Friday evening last was retweeted by several people and finally when Tara Krishnaswamy, an activist based at Bangalore and Pranayea Manjari, a Mumbai based activist, requested the IJM to intervene.

According to an FIR filed by one of the detained workers, Gobardhan in Cholavaram PS, who also informed about the plight of the migrants to this correspondent over phone, 345 migrant workers of the three districts of Odisha were working in the kiln since January last. "The owner Vinod and his agent gave Rs 30,000 per head in January and brought us here. He offered Rs 200 per day as daily wage but paid Rs 50, which is much less than the minimum wage fixed by the Government. We were compelled to work for 15 hours a day and locked inside the chamber and tortured. We were brutally beaten and scolded in filthy words," the FIR mentioned.

It was informed by Narasingh Majhi another worker that, when the workers had already completed the assigned tasks at par with the advance payments they had received from the contractor, but the kiln owner was not allowing them to leave. The work did not stop even during the lockdown period. "Each worker was being paid Rs 25 for lifting 1,000 bricks from the moulding site to the furnace, and in this way they were being paid Rs 50 a day for lifting 2,000 on head load, which was the optimum a worker could do," said he.

Tara Krishnaswamy from Bangalore, RK Radhakrishnan and Ms Sharon from Chennai along with their friends and groups like End Bonded Labour drew the attention of IJM and the detained workers were rescued and shifted to a temporary shelter - a a Government school in Red hills. They stayed in the shelter for a day and was deported to Odisha by train after health check up on Tuesday. All expenses including train fair and food etc. were borne by the TN Government. Vaisali one of the activists informed that the district administration will issue the bonded labour certificates to all the workers that will entitle them including children for Rs 20,000 each under bonded labour rehabilitation scheme.