A day after holding talks with Tamil Nadu government authorities over the brewing migrant workers issue in Chennai, the official delegation from Bihar visited knitwear hub Tirupur on Sunday to check on the safety of workers from the northern state after fake videos claiming attacks on the workforce had led to panic among them.
Led by Bihar rural development secretary D Balamurugan, the four-member team expressed satisfaction over the steps taken by Tamil Nadu government and the Tirupur district administration to ensure safety and protection of the workers.
They discussed the issue with the officials including district collector S Vineeth and police commissioner Praveen Kumar, representatives of textile industry and contractors who bring in workers from other states, Balamurugan said.
The delegation also interacted with the workers and told them not to believe in rumours and fake videos, after which they regained their confidence, as many of them considered the information coming from them to be true, the senior officer said.
"We are satisfied by the steps taken by Tamil Nadu government and the district administration in ensuring safety of the workers to allay the fears from their minds," he said.
These confidence building measures have brought the situation to normalcy, the delegation said.
More than 1.7 lakh migrant workers are employed in Tirupur in readymade garment manufacturing and allied industries, district officials said.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin on Saturday had reassured his Bihar counterpart Nitish Kumar that all migrant workers are safe and the police of the southern state registered cases against two journalists, including the editor of a Hindi daily for spreading rumours.
The issue of fake claims on attacks in Tamil Nadu on migrant workforce snowballed into a political slugfest between the ruling DMK and the BJP. The saffron party targeted the Nitish Kumar-led regime in Bihar, which dispatched an official team for fact finding.
