Province-1 prepares list of 25,000 Indian brick workers to send back home

BIRATNAGAR: The Indian government has taken an initiative to take back its citizens working in various brick kilns in Province 1.

Indian Embassy in Nepal has shown its interest to take back its citizens after the Koshi Zone Brick Entrepreneurs’ Association urged the Indian side to take its citizens back to their country amid the naitionwide lockdown.

Most of the brick kilns in the country have been shut down due to the prolonged lockdown. Migrant workers are provided some amount for food, Chairman of the Association, Mahendra Saha said.

The Association has been collecting the list of the Indian workers currently working in 74 brick kilns in Sunsari, Morang and Jhapa districts.

The Indian Embassy has provided a form to collect the list of the stranded workers, Shah said.

They are preparing to send the final list to the Embassy in Kathmandu on Friday. It is learnt that while 90 percent of the Indian workers are from the Indian state of West Bengal, the rest are from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.

Since the production of bricks is seasonal, Indian workers to come to Nepal in October and return by the first week of April. The workers have been stranded due to the lockdown in Nepal and India.