Aid for Cremation Secured Through SSK Initiative

Sarabjit Kaur on February 10th, 2016

Under the Migrant Worker Support Program, several village level awareness programmes are being conducted by SSK Muratganj at the behest of PEPUS. Through village level meetings migrant workers and their families are being provided information about several social security and welfare schemes. The awareness built is enabling them to benefit from different schemes. This is the narrative of the case of Mr. Ramsajiwan, a resident of Gram Panchayat Parsara, Muratganj, Kaushambi who was registered with the labour department with the help of Shramik Mitra Sukhlal in 2012.

However, the timely renewal could not be done due to which he was unable to benefit from any of the welfare schemes being provided by the labour department. A village level meeting was being conducted in Parsara—Ramsajiwan’s village—by the Field Worker Mr. Ram Naresh. In the course of the meeting, information was being provided on the labour department’s schemes and programmes. During the discussion on the subject, Shramik Mitra Sukhlal informed Ram Naresh about workers in the village who are already registered with the labour department.

Upon knowing this Ram Naresh elaborated on the process of renewal in the labour department and also discussed 15 welfare schemes available after timely renewal. Thereafter, Sukhlal assisted the workers in his villages that were already registered in getting their renewals done. As a result, of these efforts, renewals were completed by 26/12/2014. Ramsajiwan happened to be one of those workers who got their renewals facilitated. Ramsajiwan was a seasonal migrant Labourer, apart from this, he also worked under MNREGS while at home. The family was supported by Ramsajiwan’s labour. Faced with the sudden death of Ramsajiwan his family was devastated. The family came to the brink of starvation as late Ramsajiwan was the sole bread winner. His wife Naiki Devi was crying in despair. Sometime after Ramsajiwan’s death Shramik Mitra Sukhlal came to the SSK with the BoCW ID of late Ramsajiwan and asked for assistance. The coordinator Mr.Shivmangal was informed about the circumstances after which he instructed Sukhlal to get requisite documents including the Death Certificate, a copy of the Family Register and a letter from the Gram Pradhan verifying the Death of Ramsajiwan and take them to the labour department at Manjhanpur along with the BoCW ID of Ramsajiwan. The person to be contacted at the labour department was Mr. Dharmendra who was duly contacted by Sukhlal. He checked the documents and asked Sukhlal to deposit a photocopy of the bank passbook of late Ramsajiwan’s wife with an affidavit. He was told that after completion of the process the family of deceased would get a sum of Rs. 115000 as cremation aid. The process was duly completed by Sukhlal and the said amount was credited to Naiki Devi’s account on 11/9/2015. Naiki Devi acknowledges the assistance of SSK she received in getting the aid for cremation.