247 bonded labourers rescued in Tiruvallur, quack, asst held

According to a district administration official, DLSA secretary Saraswati, along with the police, conducted a surprise raid in SBC Brick Works at Punnapakkam on Tuesday evening. “It was transpired that as many as 247 workers employed there are bonded labourers,”the official said.

All the rescued are from Odisha and Chhattisgarh. Of the 247 bonded labourers, 234 are from Balangir, Nuapada, Kalahandi and Sonepur districts of Odisha, and include 88 women and 50 children, most of them under 10 years of age. The labourers were subjected to hard labour for more than three months.

Meanwhile, Uthukottai tahsildar R Muruganathan has filed a police complaint against J Madhan, owner of the brick kiln and urged the Vengal police to take action. During an interrogation of the rescued bonded labourers, it transpired that the brick kiln owner had “bought” them by paying advance payments of up to Rs 35,000 per labourer. “Madhan didn’t provide the minimum wages fixed by the government,” Muruganathan said.

Police had also seized drugs, including antibiotics, from the ‘clinic’ run by Prem Kumar at the kiln. “The labourers were provided with some medicine to refrain them from going outside,” another official said. Meanwhile, the district administration has taken measures to send the rescued labours back to their native villages and have issued release certificates to them.On February 5, Chengalpattu district administration had rescued around 10 bonded labours from a rice mill near Madhuranthangam.