Nizamabad: Departing migrants pass hamalis' burden on women farm labour

Nizamabad: While the migrant workers from north India heading home, their burden is being shouldered here in Telangana by women in fields, markets and purchasing across Telangana State.

If one doesn't believe, one should visit Mondi Chintha thanda and DB thanada in Dharpalli mandal of Nizamabad district.

Usually, women are employed for transplantation paddy sapling. But now days they are performing the job of hamalies as well at the food grain purchasing centres set up by the government to buy paddy at village and mandal levels. The paddy purchase center has been set up under the Kolipaka Prameriya Co-operative Society.

Since there is a shortage of labourers who have proceeded to their home State, farmers are worried that paddy would remained piled up in the absence of hamalis and officials may get an excuse for not buying their paddy as who would upload and unload the agricultureal produce on trucks. Therefore, the women labourers of the district have replaced them as hamalis.

Some female farmers and female agri labourer who noticed this thought it was useless to wait for hamalis. The hands of the women who planted the rice into field are now also loading and uploading paddy on vehicles and unloading at the purchasing centres.

Tribal women laborers are weighing 41 kg sized grain gunny bags and loading the paddy bags over the shoulder in the trucks. Not one, not two, but 13 women farmers have become hamalis. With the establishment of a purchase center in the village, the women are given the hamali work as a substitute for lost work due to machinery as well.

Women work in harsh conditions, for minimum wages in paddy purchase centers each day someone in the group collapses from the heat.

Doing this work for every summer of their lives has made their movements almost mechanical and working in large groups, they manage to transporting paddy rice over large swathes of land each day. But, the land they work on is not theirs, neither is the rice they grow.

The wages are abysmal

Women's work the job of weighig and loading are part of the package of services offered by a group on a single bag for which they are paid between Rs4.75 and Rs 5.20. The hamali wage will go to the female worker on the day it was released by Civil Supply Corporation. The wages they earn in the burning sun harsh conditions cannot meet current financial needs.

Their hard work is incalculable compared to that of men. Men on the rice farms lead relatively simpler lives as compared to the women. In addition to their back-breaking work in the fields, women often have to take out the needs of the homeowner. In spite of financial self-sufficiency, her alienation continues to be haunting.