Indians stranded in Cameroon: 27 workers from Jharkhand without food and money seek urgent help

PTC Web Desk: Around 27 workers from Jharkhand have urgently appealed to the Central Government for evacuation from Cameroon, where they are currently stranded. These workers come from Bokaro, Giridih, and Hazaribagh districts.

In a video message, the workers explained that a private company brought them to Cameroon on March 31. However, the company has not paid their wages for the past four months. As a result, the workers are facing severe shortages of food and water and lack the funds to recharge their phones to communicate with their families and seek help.

Bebi Devi, Jharkhand’s Minister for the Department of Women, Child Development and Societal Security, has requested the Ministry of External Affairs to ensure the safe return of these workers. She highlighted the urgency of the situation in a tweet, tagging External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and emphasising that the workers from Bokaro, Hazaribagh, and Giridih are in dire need of assistance.

Bebi Devi tweeted, “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.”

Sikandar Ali, a social worker and activist dedicated to migrant workers’ issues, has also urged both the Central and state governments to take decisive diplomatic action to secure the workers’ safe return. Ali’s call for help underscores the recurrent nature of such incidents involving migrant workers from Jharkhand.

This is not an isolated incident. Similar cases have emerged in Jharkhand in recent years. For instance, last year, a group of migrant labourers from Bokaro, Giridih, and Hazaribagh districts found themselves stranded in Saudi Arabia under similar circumstances. They were engaged by a contractor for construction work, who later stopped the work and withheld their pay, leaving them stranded and financially incapacitated.

In another case in 2022, a group of workers from Jharkhand were stranded in Mali. They were rescued only after making appeals for help on social media. These workers had not been paid for months, and their contractor, who had recruited them, vanished with their passports, leaving them in a precarious situation in the West African nation.