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English daily published in Bengaluru & Doha
Of unemployment, job loss and clipped salaries
Hameed Ashraf | NT
The steady decrease in the number of people testing positive for Covid-19 may have come as a huge relief, but the woes of the people caused by the pandemic have not completely ended. Layoff s, unemployment and under-employment, which were already a bane in the country, have hit an all-time high and the recovery is not going to be easy, reports Hameed Ashraf.
During May last year, Lavanya K was still getting accustomed to the ‘work from home’ (WFH) life brought in by the pandemic, when she received a phone call from her employer. It was to tell the 32-year-old techie working for an IT firm at JP Nagar in Bengaluru that she was being laid off.
“They did not have a reason to fire me,” Lavanya told News Trail. “They just told me there was a staff cut. Later, several others were laid off after me from different domains,” she added. She had joined the firm in 2017.
This is not just one case. Since the pandemic broke loose, many people and businesses are struggling to sustain in the city. A number of businesses have shut down. For businesses that were already battered by the economic slowdown, Covid became the final blow.
Nawaz (name changed on request), a 47-year-old citybased software engineer, lost his job and then his father in August due to Covid-19. The IT professional who is currently jobless said that demonetisation had initially affected his employer firm and then the GST dealt a second blow. He had been working as a freelancer for various firms till the lockdown was imposed.
“After the lockdown, companies stopped giving me jobs and I was entirely dependent on my father’s pension,” Nawaz said. Facing a mid-career crisis, Nawaz could not land a decent job. He tried his hand at business, only to suffer huge losses. “I don’t know what to do next,” Nawaz said.
According to the Karnataka State IT/ITeS Employees’ Union (KITU), at least 20,000 software engineers lost their jobs in Bengaluru alone. “We are fighting the case of 47 IT employees who were laid off. Their matter is pending before the labour commissioner and this is not the only such case,” a senior office-bearer of the KITU said on the condition of anonymity.
The pandemic also crushed dozens of media houses in the state, initiating salary cuts and layoffs. For young journalists, aged 21 to 25, who graduated in the middle of the pandemic, it’s been a diffi cult task to fi nd gainful employment in their chosen fi eld. “Like everybody else, I thought everything will be back to normal in a month or two, and that I would be employed after studying,” a young graduate said. “But when my professor told me that a company that was supposed to come for placements had backed off, that’s when it hit me that I might not get a job immediately,” he added.
Women constitute the largest workforce in garment units, working from 9 am to 5.30 pm for salaries ranging between Rs 8,500 and Rs 10,000 per month. There are around 1,500 estimated garment factories in the state, of which over 900 are situated in Bengaluru. According to Labour Minister Shivaram Hebbar, more than 2.85 lakh women were employed in 983 garment units before the pandemic struck. Eventually, as per 2021 data, many of the units shut down and the total number of women workers has now dropped to less than one lakh.
According to nationwide fi gures presented by Union Labour and Employment Minister Bhupendra Yadav in 2021, Karnataka came fi rst in the number of suicides committed by unemployed people. As per NCRB data, 553 unemployment-related suicides were reported in the state in 2019. During April 2021, Shilpa Balaraj, an Ekalavya awardee, allegedly ended her life by hanging in her room over depression she got into after not getting a job since the pandemic-induced lockdown.
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