ISLAMABAD: With the novel coronavirus (Covid-19) cases topping 3,000 and a lockdown imposed nationwide, day labourers and other daily wagers have been divested by the crisis.
Not only are they struggling to ward off the disease but they also have to stave off hunger. Hence daily-wagers have demanded that the government provide them sufficient financial and other material assistance. For 33-year-old newspaper hawker Sufi Saeed in Rawalpindi, it was already hard for the poor to make ends meet. He said that the closure of trains and restaurants had led to a decline in demand for newspapers and thus limited his opportunities to earn.
”I used to deliver newspapers to more than 80 houses before Covid-19 spread. Now, they have dwindled to just 17,” Saeed said, adding that he used to work at a shop as a second job, but even that has been snatched after the district administration ordered to close all those stores that do not sell groceries.
People are so scared of the disease that they have stopped reading newspapers as they think a newspaper can also transmit the virus, he lamented. Khursheed Khan, a 72- year old hawker in the federal capital said that he was the sole breadwinner of his family and since deliveries of newspapers were down and with no other means of income, his family was staring down the barrel of starvation.
”We come here daily with the hope of earning something but all in vain, sometimes the rich and generous people help us out by giving us money, said Adil Butt, a loader. With restaurants shut to contain the infectious disease, waiters who worked there on daily wages are in dire straits.
Rashid Ali, a 17-year-old waiter at an eatery in Sector F-10 said that this pandemic has forced him to suffer even without any infection.
He said that the authorities have promised to help him with groceries and rations but he said that he was more concerned with managing other financial issues such as paying the rent and bills. “We will be forced to leave our house by the landlords as we cannot pay the rent anymore,” he said. There are taxi and rickshaw drivers, local transport drivers and conductors, maids and keepers who are desperately waiting for someone to extend their hand and support them during such testing times.
