Passengers wary of letting anyone touch their luggage, say porters at Chandigarh railway station
The station currently has only two passenger trains that make a stop here.
With just two passenger trains making a stop here, porters at the Chandigarh railway station are struggling to find work, especially as passengers are now wary of letting anyone touch their luggage, fearing the spread of Covid-19.
“We used to earn around Rs 500 a day in off-season. Now, we are lucky even if we earn Rs 50 a day,” says Vijay Meena, one of the two presidents of the porters’ body at the station.
He says that seven of the total 39 porters at the station have already left for their hometowns and those who are left behind are struggling to make ends meet. “I barely have any money to pay my house rent, which has been due for the past four months, and now I am unsure if I will even be able to send my children to school this year,” Meena says.
Most of the porters live close to the station in Daria village, Manimajra and Mauli Jagran. Divided into two groups of 15, the porters work on alternate days, taking precautions such as wearing masks and sanitising their hands.
But rarely finding any work, most of them sit in a room allotted to them near the parking. Sawar Khan, the other president of the porters’ body, says that people are reluctant to hire porters as they don’t want anyone handling their luggage amid the Covid-19 outbreak. Another reason, he says, is that the trains line up on platform number one, from where people can easily drag their luggage to the exit. “We would get more work if the two trains, Jan Shatabdi and Paschim Express, line up on other platforms.”
RAILWAY AUTHORITIES MULLING COVID NEGATIVE CARDS FOR PORTERS
Sympathising with their condition, station superintendent of the Chandigarh Railway station, Anil Aggarwal said, “We are thinking of making cards for porters assuring people they are Covid negative after screening them at the railway hospital so that people are more confident of hiring them.”
He added that the railway authorities were also helping the porters and Northern Railways Women’s Welfare Organisation had recently provided ration to 35 porters a week ago.