Letter to BS: Lockdown should not mean robbing Peter to pay Paul

The Union government’s order to the states to seal borders in order to restrict the movement of labourers who have been rendered jobless and homeless, amounts to mass discrimination. Many  left unable to pay their house rents even as the Delhi government issued a statement recently saying that it would pay the rents in case the tenants were un­able to do so. On the other hand, there are a number of senior citizens who rent their houses to the migrant workers and their sole earning is the rent paid by them. The Prime Minister has also ap­pealed to the industry to pay the wages of the workers for the period of the lockdown. But how will the small-scale in­dustries/contractors, whose businesses have shut down, make the payments to the workers? Similarly, there are lakhs of private schools across the nation, functioning on no-profit-no-loss basis and the government has asked them to defer the fee payment. But they will have to pay the teaching and non-teaching staff. The lockdown should not mean robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Pooja Khosla  Chandigarh

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