Not Received Salary For Last Four Months: 27 Indian Workers Stranded In Cameroon Seek Centre’s Help

These workers in a video message claimed they were brought to Cameroon on March 31 by a private company. However, the company is not paying wages to the workers for the last four months.

New Delhi: They have not received their salary for the last four months and are running out of food and water. And some of them even don’t have money to recharge their phone. This is the heart-wrenching story of 27 workers from Jharkhand who are stranded in Cameroon. In a video message, they have appealed to the Centre to evacuate them from the Central African nation. Notably, these workers hail from Bokaro, Giridih and Hazaribagh.

These workers in a video message claimed they were brought to Cameroon on March 31 by a private company. However, the company is not paying wages to the workers for the last four months.

They also claimed they were running out of food and water and did not even have money to recharge their phones.

After their plight came to limelight, Bebi Devi, Minister for Department of Women, Child Development and Societal Security, requested the External Affairs Ministry to ensure their safe return and tagged minister S Jaishankar.

“27 youths from Bokaro, Hazaribagh and Giridih districts of our Jharkhand state are stranded in Cameroon, South Africa. All of them were working in a private company there, but they have not been paid their salary for the last four months,” Devi said in a post on X.

Sikandar Ali, a social worker and activist, who is working on the issue of migrant workers, has demanded the Central and state governments to take concrete diplomatic initiatives for the safe return of the workers.

This is not the first case of the matter. Many such cases have come to limelight in the past in Jharkhand and other places as well.

In 2023, one group of workers were stranded in Saudi Arabia and had appealed to the Jharkhand government to facilitate their return. The labourers from Bokaro, Giridih and Hazaribagh districts that time claimed they were engaged by a contractor for construction work. However, the contractor stopped the work and did not pay them.

In similar manner, a group of workers from Jharkhand in 2022 were stranded in Mali and were later rescued after they appealed to the Indian authorities for help on social media.