‘Driving auto rickshaw in India is 1,000 times better than being a mason in Iraq’

It was after an employee from the same company contacted helpline number started by Sangrur MP from AAP that routes opened for them to come back.

Bhagwant Mann (third from right) with the youths who came back from Iraq. (Source: Express)

Back from Karbala city of Iraq on Sunday, an auto rickshaw driver, Harinder Singh from Ghudani Khurd village of Doraha, is all set to drive auto-rickshaw again in India.

Singh, 45, went to Iraq only a month ago and was promised a mason’s job in Marmara Construction company based in Turkey. However, following the militant onslaught in Iraq, the company left the country, handing it over to the Iraqi authorities leaving some 230 Indian employees in inhuman conditions.

Talking to Newsline, Singh said, “I left for Iraq last month on May 7. What I have experienced in just a month cannot be described in words. I must say driving an auto rickshaw in India is 1,000 times better than being a mason in Iraq. We were kept as masons but we did the job of a sweeper, labourer and what not.”

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He added that “conditions of living in Iraq are inhuman, especially after the war broke out”. “Food was provided only once a day which included some leftover rice. On some days one or two slices of bread were given in the morning. Nothing more than this,” he said.

It was after an employee from the same company contacted helpline number started by Sangrur MP Bhagwant Mann from the Aam Aadmi Party that routes opened for them to come back. “Still, more than 200 Indians from Punjab, Andhra Pradesh and Haryana are stranded there. Five of us landed at Delhi airport late on Saturday after a US- based welfare society contacted us,” he said.

Asked about salaries, he said, “In India I earned Rs 15,000 a month from auto rickshaw. I was offered $500 a month, almost double of what I earned here, and I decided to leave India. I spent Rs 1.5 lakh, all my savings to settle there but I have returned empty-handed. Company has absconded from Iraq without paying salaries,” he said.

He added that more than 50 people were stuffed into one room with 20 beds by the company. Having an aged father, wife and a two-year-old daughter, Singh said, “I am back as auto driver in Ludhiana now. At least here I am safe.”

Divya Goyal

Divya Goyal is a Principal Correspondent with The Indian Express, based in Punjab. Her interest lies in exploring both news and feature stories, with an effort to reflect human interest at the heart of each piece. She writes on gender issues, education, politics, Sikh diaspora, heritage, the Partition among other subjects. She has also extensively covered issues of minority communities in Pakistan and Afghanistan. She also explores the legacy of India's partition and distinct stories from both West and East Punjab. She is a gold medalist from the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC), Delhi, the most revered government institute for media studies in India, from where she pursued English Journalism (Print). Her research work on “Role of micro-blogging platform Twitter in content generation in newspapers” had won accolades at IIMC. She had started her career in print journalism with Hindustan Times before switching to The Indian Express in 2012. Her investigative report in 2019 on gender disparity while treating women drug addicts in Punjab won her the Laadli Media Award for Gender Sensitivity in 2020. She won another Laadli for her ground report on the struggle of two girls who ride a boat to reach their school in the border village of Punjab. ... Read More

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