Lockdown Warrior Matiur

His usual habbit is to be passionate in work that has no monetary remuneration as exactly said in Bengali idiomatic expression "Gharer kheye boner mosh taaraano" ( literally meaning eating at home only to drive wild buffaloes). A commerce graduate and mid forties in age, this man has become lockdown warrior for migrant workers trapped in differnent states, for last two months. Armed with a smart phone and unabated willpower, this man is literally fighting across the country with the states of Punjab, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Manipur, Gujarat.
Since the night of 24th March, when countrywide lockdown was declared, Matiur started receiving desperate calls from migrant labourers across the country at his home in Jadupur Village under Berhampore PS of Murshidabad, West Bengal.
From then on he started to call and write emails to district and state level administration with the name, address and phone numbers of the trapped migrants of Murshidabad in various other states.
Matiur says, "The superindent of police Y. Rajbanshi of Jangipur had taken exemplary humanitarian steps to arrange food for the migrant labourers starving in different states. But no other administrative help arrived except that". Matiur created 65 whatsapp groups connecting 2000 migrant labourers trapped in various places. He said "Owning to the dedicated efforts of the police super Y Rajbanshi 5-6 hundred labourers got their food arranged".
For the rest of the migrants Matiur connected his previously known contacts of AID India, its Kolkata representatives Somnath Chattopadhyay and Partha De and likes. With financial help from them, their food could be arranged. He said, "The migrants are now crying to return home and some have gone into mental depression"
Mati comes from a well to do farmer family. In 2009 he noticed that 7-8 months pregnant tribal women are being forced to work in field in adjoining villages with , due to their abject poverty. Mati trained them in needlework. He procured 7 sewing machines for them, with the support from the then district judge Shyamal Kumar Gupta and the cotton research center's scientist Sandip Kumar Dutta. This is the way he learnt the ABCs of social work. In 2014 he got involved to solve the problems of the transgenders. In 2015 he came to know that migrant workers of the Karnasubarna region of Bengal have got stuck in Saudi Arabia. He then drove field study with students of Netaji Open University and found out that one in every three families of Rangamati Chandpara Gram Panchayat has a member working in the middle east for a living. And many of them have been cheated there at work. With the help of erstwhile Police Superintendent of Murshidabad Sri Rahul Srivastav he brought back many such cheated labourers from the Middle East alive and some deadbody. Lockdown warrior Matiur is now saddened because he could not ensure the return of most of the trapped migrants labourers from other states before EID.
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