The workers in social service sector having lost their jobs during two consecutive covid lockdowns one this year and the other last year are struggling for survival as they are forced to change the tracks of livelihood amid a phase wise relaxation in covid lockdown. Though it is unbelievable but people will have to believe it now that people working in social service sector during the day of pre-covid normalities are now selling vegetables and fruits in several vegetable markets in Srinagar and major towns of Kashmir valley. This shows that workers in the social service sector are desperate to avail new job opportunities even if they are asked to do the work which they have never done till the outbreak of covid-19 pandemic. The reasons are not to be explained but are self explanatory. Workers in social service sectors have lost all means of earning their livelihood and so much so that they don’t earn even the meager income they require for meeting the daily family expenses. They have no options but to risk contracting covid-19 infection in a hostile economic scenario as otherwise their families will surely die of starvation. Keeping in view that fact that business were closed due to covid lockdown and consequently the employers also asked their workers to stop working . So thousands of marginalised jobless workers of social service sectors will by all standards of understandabilities start to starve if the people of charitable trusts don’t reach out to them with basic food items required for cooking daily meals. The situation itself explains to us that while lockdown does not make any difference to middle and affluent classes, it becomes next to impossible for the poor to have two time meals a day unless and until people of charitable trusts don’t reach out to them with few packets of food items required for cooking daily meals.
Unfortunately people in the government voicing concern about livelihoods of the people have never shown such a deeper concern for the joblessness of workers of social service sectors as otherwise they would have thought about a survival package for marginalised worker rendered jobless due to two consecutive lockdowns in last two years.
Covid-19 changing lives does not mean that let poor die on the streets and people of middle and affluent classes only survive. Unfortunately people in the government voicing concern about livelihoods of the people have never shown such a deeper concern for the joblessness of workers of social service sectors as otherwise they would have thought about a survival package for marginalised worker rendered jobless due to two consecutive lockdowns in last two years. The survival package for the jobless workers of the social service sectors demands a survey and strategy which has not attracted the attention of the government in Jammu & Kashmir so for. With health specialists of repute declaring arrival of third wave of covid -19 “inevitable”, the only way for letting the marginalised workers of social service sectors survive could be a survival package .
