39-year-old Mohammad Karim has poignant memories of the floods of 1988 that engulfed his home back in Nagaon district of Assam. Born into a family of traditional rice farmers, Karim, then just 9 years old, remembers gathering what little he could before fleeing the raging waters of the Brahmaputra that had begun to seep into his tiny home. He recalls joining his parents, sisters and scores of villagers to take refuge at the local railway station, considered safe as it is situated on a higher surface.
“Paani ka experience hai humein (We have experienced the effects of water),” he says in broken Hindi, smiling. The familiarity with floods and its trenchant consequences came in handy for Karim and his Assamese colleagues this month when they saw the waters of the Periyar rise swiftly around their homes and workplace in Perumbavoor town in Kerala. The town in Ernakulam district, considered the nerve center of migrant labour in Kerala hosting more than one lakh workers in its surroundings, has seen a steady outflow of labourers back to their home states after being ravaged by floods.
“We had close to 2600 migrant workers at a relief camp in the town alone. After water receded and trains began operating, we estimate a large number of them have gone back. A lot of factories and industries have been badly affected so there’s no work at the moment. It will take weeks to get back on track again,” says an officer at the local taluk office.
The road to Perumbavoor from Aluva, lined with plywood factories, brick kilns, stone-crushing factories and rice mills, bears the heaviest economic damage of the floods in the district. Many of these facilities, employing thousands of migrant labourers, are today shut, their machinery and equipments damaged beyond repair and its premises filled with layers of slush. Owners of small and medium-scale industries in these areas have to spend the next few weeks on concentrated cleaning and then running from pillar-to-post in search of government compensation and bank lending.
George, who runs a partnership of a factory that converts raw plastic trash into granules, says equipment worth Rs 15 lakhs and plastic material of at least 90 tonnes have been damaged. “We really don’t know where to start. We are a plastic scrap dealership. We don’t even know if we are eligible for government compensation. Kerala is not known for big businesses, but for small and medium-scale enterprises. If people like us are not protected, there will be big losses to the economy,” he says.
At a nearby authorized car dealership and workshop of a prominent firm, adjoining a paddy field, remnants of the floods can be seen on the asbestos roofs. The water that had risen more than 20 ft in height carried waste materials which remains deposited on the roof. “The water went over our roof. The entire workshop was under water,” says an employee, who did not wish to be identified.
Source: Indian Express
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