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Tamil Nadu
Struggling for survival: A group of load men in front of the Tiruchi Goods Shed. While the rocketing double digit inflation has hit every section of the society, worse is the case of economically downtrodden section of working class, comprising loadmen employed in railway goods shed, porters, rickshaw pullers, etc. There is only a single earning member in most of the families in this section and that explains the acuteness of the misery they suffer due to the price-rise. They are already on the throes of a crisis and the daily work is driving them towards fatigue, which, in turn, affects their productivity. The unprecedented inflation has had a telling impact on the about 500 and odd load men involved in the loading and unloading operations in the goods shed near the Tiruchi Railway Junction. These load men were already suffering due to the sharp fall in the arrival of goods from various parts of the country; and for the past six months they are facing untold hardship. Earlier we had both BG and MG sections in Tiruchi. A lot of goods which arrived from different parts of the country in the BG goods trains will be unloaded here and then loaded into the MG trains for transporting to other parts of the State and vice-versa. Over 1,500 load men are working here and they are employed throughout the month. With the abolition of the MG section, the goods were directly being transported to the respective destinations through BG trains. The strength of the workers has dwindled to 500 at present and they get job hardly for 10 days a month. Fifty three year-old K. Mani, a load man for the past two decades, was getting reasonable wages till a few years ago and able to save. But at present he is going for work for only 10 days in a month to earn Rs.4,000. “For the past few months, the prices are out of control. Even the price of tea has gone up from Rs.2 to Rs.3. We are managing with the Rs.2 kg rice, but even for getting this the fair price shop personnel are forcing us to purchase grocery items”, he complains. Kerosene price upYet another factor which has hit them hard is the steep hike in the price of kerosene. “We don’t have LPG connection and the 10 litre kerosene supplied for the ration card is not enough. With the scarcity for diesel, many lorries were using kerosene due to which kerosene price has gone up from Rs.20 to Rs.32”. He says that much of his savings is getting exhausted for the past few months. If this grim situation continued the whole family will find it difficult to recover for a long, he says with anxiety writ large on his face. Even from the present strength of load men, many have started moving to other vocations with the hope of augmenting their revenue to meet the ever increasing expenditure.
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