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Oriya workers return from Gujarat to a bleak future

Hundreds of Oriya workers who returned home from earthquake-hit Gujarat are now facing a bleak future in their native villages.

Most of them were earning good incomes in Gujarat. Today, they are all jobless. "We had migrated to Gujarat in search of livelihood. But today we are back to square one -- without work," said Gautam Behra of Khurda.

There are hundreds with more or less similar tales. "We were happy, but the quake destroyed our dreams of a good life," said Ganu Pradhan of Berhampur.

While the migrants continue to return home without jobs and with harrowing tales of the quake, the state government has no plans to rehabilitate them. Labour Minister Bimbhadar Kuanr is reluctant to say anything in the matter. "We are looking into the problem," is all he allows.

Orissa had sent a team of officials to assess the condition of workers from the state in Gujarat after the quake. Kuanr himself had lead the team. But nothing concrete has emerged from the visit till now.

Former member of Parliament and senior Congress politician Jayanti Patnaik has already demanded the immediate rehabilitation of the workers returning to Orissa from Gujarat. "Most of them lost everything in the devastating quake. Out of fear they came here, but there is none to help them," she said.

She told rediff.com that it was the state government's duty to rehabilitate them till normalcy returns to Gujarat and they are able to go back to work. "Unfortunately, the state government is doing nothing," she said.

More than 500,000 Oriya labourers were working in the textile and diamond industries in Ahmedabad and Surat and small diamond-cutting units in Bhuj and were considered the backbone of Gujarat's textile and diamond industries for the last two decades.. Most of them are from the southern districts of Ganjam and Gajpati and the coastal districts of Puri and Cuttack.

This, however, is the third time in a decade that they have had to flee the state. Thousands of Oriyas had fled Surat and Ahmedabad during the communal conflagration of 1992 following the demolition of the Babri Masjid and again in the wake of the plague scare of 1994.

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