FEATURE Labour camps
guidelines and a senior executive, Naveen Pratap, was very confident in saying that this camp is among the top five in India. To look at what Sobha lists as
the attributes that set them apart from other labour camps also indicates where others are lacking. The facility is cleaned four times a day. Sobha VP, Raju Balan is such a stickler for hygiene that you can eat off any of the 50 toilet cubicle floors. There was none of the ‘fragrant’ waft expected from public toilets or communal living. Perhaps it was this that surprised me most. This is probably the single most important factor, as a camp where twelve hundred men live and work together can mean the rapid spread of many diseases linked to poor sanitation. All labour camps are supposed
to meet with some level of government regulation, but the extent to which they are complied with is not always clear. Basic standards have to be maintained lest the government send in their inspectors. There are ways of fudging the facts, however. For example, there are those that might put in shower units, but fail to supply water (or supply too little). On the flip side, there are
At 5’8” I was unable to stand up in the rooms
others that go the whole hog and have much more stringent rules and regulations about who makes it into their labour camps as well as what facilities they offer. Those in charge at Sobha know
that water and hygiene are the two most important factors in preventing outbreaks of disease and maintaining high standards. The 2.7-acre site with 220 rooms has a sewage treatment plant. It also has a reverse osmosis water filtration plant that can supply 100 litres of drinking water every hour. The run- off water is used for the bathrooms. Water tanks, with 100,000-litre
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capacity that are regularly cleaned, offer workers constant water to bathe, wash clothes and maintain their living areas.
The site that we were able to
sneak into nearby had much more cramped living quarters, with large families in much closer confines. At 5ft 8 inches I was unable to stand up in the rooms. Gaping cracks had been filled with plastic bags and there was no sanitation or drainage. Nor were there any toilets. Instead, workers and their families used the field adjacent to where they lived. Water was supplied by way of a rusty tanker near the entrance.
One thing that did strike me was
the lack of women on the Sobha compound. They are not allowed to live on-site to prevent issues between various ethnic and social groups that work together in close quarters. Other camps do allow women on site, which means the children have to come too. It was clear to see how this causes problems with overcrowding and sanitation, let alone education and other welfare issues. At Sobha, on the other hand,
there is a medical worker on-site and serious cases are transferred
LABOUR CAMPS:
01. Families live together in many camps despite the lack of facilities
02. Make-shift cooking at a labour camp at Gurgaon, near Delhi
03. Rooms with a view, at Gurgaon camp
04. On this golf development there are showers, but without water
to a nearby hospital. The law requires medical support on building sites, but what is provided varies. Some sites have a mobile unit that visits weekly, while others have a direct tie-in with local hospitals – they bypass the medical worker completely. There was an attitude in the unofficial camps of making do with what they have. Cooks were using sawdust left over from the site to fuel cooking fires, with barbecues made from bricks. Such an attitude is normal here, and sourcing clean cooking fuel is something they would grapple with where they come from too. Sobha founder PNC Menon believes that unless his workers are comfortable, they will not be able to do a proper day’s work. On the day I visited the temperature
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