A day after thousands of starving migrant workers staged a protest at Payippad in Kottayam district, their counterparts at Perumbavoor, Ernakulam district, on Monday erupted in protest for lack of adequate food items.
The protest on Sunday had cast a shadow on the tall claims of the state government that it had done special arrangements for the migrant labourers. Aided by a pliant media, the government had gone on a Pan-India PR overdrive to show that Kerala was ahead of other states in terms of Covid preparedness. The state government had Smarting from the setback, the government sought to project the workers’ unrest as a ‘conspiracy’ by Islamic radicals. The government also told presspersons that it had deputed a senior bureaucrat of the rank of principal secretary to look into the affairs of the migrant labourers. However, Monday’s protest has reinforced the suspicion that the government had not done its home work with regard to providing food to migrant workers.
Meanwhile, the protest had exposed the duplicity of a section of the media which tried to black out the protest by migrant labourers on the grounds that it would trigger chain reaction. However, these channels were celebrating the exodus of migrant labourers from Delhi to UP.
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