Cop injured as migrant workers protest for wages near IIT-Hyderabad

Protesting non-payment of wages despite repeated requests, about 1600 migrant workers went on the rampage and attacked the police with sticks and stones at the Indian Institute of Technology campus at Kandi in Sangareddy district on the outskirts of Hyderabad on Wednesday afternoon.

An assistant sub-inspector Sangappa received minor injuries and a police vehicle was partially damaged.

On receiving the information, additional police forces from Sangareddy, led by Superintendent of Police S Chandrashekar Reddy and DSP Sridhar Reddy rushed to the spot and brought the situation under control.

The SP pacified the agitators and assured them that their issues would be resolved at the earliest. He took a delegation of the workers to the district collector M Hanumantha Rao for talks.

The workers complained that their company had not been paying wages to them for the last two months. The collector directed the company representatives to pay the pending wages by Thursday evening in their accounts.

The collector also advised the company to begin work with the material available, strictly observing the physical distance norms and supplying the workers masks and sanitisers.

The collector said the workers had grown restive as they had been held up on the campus without work for a long time. He said works should begin in a small way to keep them engaged.

The workers, most of them from Bihar and Jharkhand, had been brought to the site by the construction major Larsen and Toubro to work on the construction of buildings on the IIT campus nearly six months ago.

Following the nationwide lockdown, they had been held up at the construction site itself. They were alleging that the company had not been paying them wages for the last two months.

On Wednesday, the workers who did not have even essentials to feed their children, began leaving the campus for their native places, as they were vexed with the lockdown and lack of wages. However, the Sangareddy police prevented them from coming out of the campus saying that the lockdown was in force.

The agitated workers picked up an argument with the police asking how long they should bear with uncertain conditions, insisting they be allowed to go back to their homes.