E-Kantipur

KATHMANDU, MAY 08 - So much for the UCPN (Maoist)’s high-sounding slogans of ‘civilian supremacy’ and ‘people power’. The party’s indefinite nationwide strike aimed at toppling the CPN-UML-led government has achieved nothing so far. It has only put paid to civilian supremacy and choked people power to death.

With no sector functioning, it is the daily wage earners who are the hardest hit by the party’s nationwide indefinite strike launched since May 2.

 Six days into the strike, with their jobs having evaporated and their meagre savings running out starvation and annihilation stare them in the face. Hordes of daily wage workers, such as rickshaw pullers, taxi drivers, porters, construction labourers, are facing the double whammy of the strike and hunger pangs.

Hari Kala Basnet, a vegetable seller in Basundhara said, “Due to the strike, I’ve not been able to bring vegetables for sale from Kalimati wholesale market,” said Basnet. “We will be ruined if the deadlock doesn’t break early.”  For one who used to earn around Rs 500 on a daily basis, Basnet is finding it difficult to manage victuals for her children.

Construction labour Ramesh BK is wrestling with similar problems. Three children and a wife rely on his earnings. Before the strike began, he used to earn Rs 300 daily but since six days there is not a coin in his pocket. “Nobody is willing to give on credit,” said BK. Every evening when he returns home his little children give him desperate looks, expecting some chocolates and biscuits. “I am helpless,” he burst into tears.

With no end in sight to the political deadlock nor indication of the strike ending, most daily wage workers are thinking of walking back to their villages. “My today goes in worrying about managing food for tomorrow,” said Shyam Bohara who hails from Dolakha district.

He added, “If the strike continues, I will head back to my village.” Bohara is the sole bread-winner for his seven-member family.

Rickshaw puller Ratna Prasad Lamichhane is sans work since May 2, the day the Maoists launched their strike. “I’m surviving on my savings but that is getting exhausted,” said Lamichhane. “From today, there’s scarcity of kerosene too.” He added, “I don’t know how I will survive.”

Some daily wage workers said they have already sent their families back home. Sri Ram Chaulagain has sent his wife and children home in Melamchi. Chaulagain, a labourer

in a carpet factory, is subsisting on plain rice without vegetables since Monday. “It is us who are the worst hit by such strikes,” he said. “I used to earn Rs. 200-300 per day on normal days.”

A poignant state of affairs indeed. Is there anyone to ameliorate the plight of these daily wage workers? Only God aside from the UCPN (Maoist) can answer that one.

Posted on: 2010-05-08 09:04

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