Companies Creating Job Opportunities For Migrant Workers In Pandemic

The large scale reverse migration of labourers from cities to the villages, in the initial weeks of the lockdown imposed due to the COVID pandemic, once again highlighted the disproportionate concentration of economic opportunities in the country’s urban areas. Lakhs of migrant workers had to return to native towns and villages, with no source of income in view and the need to carve out a new life for themselves and their families.

India under unlock has taken a series of steps to move towards normalcy since unemployment has hit India badly. A huge number is attributed to unemployment faced by migrant laborers who returned to the state during the lockdown induced by the novel coronavirus. To balance the life like before, government and companies both are taking initiatives for rural people to ease the situation, along-side government mandated schemes like the Garib Kalyan Rojgar Abhiyaan, to provide livelihood support to migrant workers and rural citizens and create a new social safety net.

Please find below some the companies who are supporting to stable the current state by generating job opportunities for migrant workers:

Vegavid Technologies: Vegavid Technology is a technology company, with the service of scalable product development solutions. The company has developed an application called ‘MyRojgaar that connects with skilled/unskilled workers and businesses. The aim is to connect labourers with companies/MSMEs across sectors such as construction, manufacturing, transportation, agriculture, and hotels. It will help a worker get employment according to skillset and location, and help MSME hire manpower. The app is available in different languages for people like English, Hindi, Telugu, Oriya, Gujarati and Punjabi, Bangla, Marathi, and Kannada for easy access.

Apple: International company, Apple is creating an application ‘APNA’, a job app to connect millions of migrant labours in India with work. 1.25 million people have been signed up for the application.envisions as a sort of LinkedIn for non-English-speaking, nonaffluent Indians. When these people move to the cities, they typically find work via small-time employment agencies or on street corners crowded with men and women waiting for someone to hire them for a few hundred rupees a day.

BANKIT: Noida based Fintech start-up – BANKIT like few others in the country, seeing the situation have been harnessing the influx of human resources in the tier 2, 3 towns and villages and promoting rural entrepreneurship. In the last couple of months, BANKIT has onboarded 15000+ Digi Mitras (Banking Correspondents) particularly in states such as UP, Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, and Odisha between March-June 2020. BANKIT vision is to make "Millionaire Agents Network'' (MAN) i.e. to maximize the number of agents who are able to make Rs. 5-10 Lakh revenue in a year by delivering various BANKIT services. There are over 1 Lakh+ Self-employed Agents already working with BANKIT and over the last few months have been onboarding 5000+ agents per month, who are at the forefront of being rural entrepreneurs.

Paynearby: Fintech startup PayNearby has launched JobsNearby, a platform to help blue-collar migrant workers in urban areas find work. The launch is an assisted job registry that will help migrant workers who have been affected by the coronavirus pandemic lockdown to seek gainful employment. Through its vast network of more than 9 lakh retail touchpoints, spread across 17,000 plus PIN codes in the country, the company wishes to create a platform where out-of-job workers can register themselves and find a suitable placement. On the supply side, the company has identified and tied up with multiple partners, including banks, NGOs, global foundations, and other aggregators, where registered workers can then be placed.