প্রকাশ: 16/05/2022
For construction
worker Yogendra Tundre, life at a building site on the outskirts of the Indian Capital
New Delhi is hard enough. This year, record high temperatures are making it
unbearable.
As India grapples with an unprecedented heatwave, the
country's vast majority of poor workers, who generally work outdoors, are
vulnerable to the scorching temperatures.
"There is too much heat and if we won't work, what will
we eat? For a few days, we work and then we sit idle for a few days because of
tiredness and heat," Tundre said.
Temperatures in the New Delhi area have touched 45 degrees
Celsius (113 Fahrenheit) this year, often causing Tundre, and his wife Lata,
who works at the same construction site, to fall sick. That in turn means they
lose income.
"Because of heat, sometimes I don't go to work. I take
days off... many times, fall sick from dehydration and then require glucose
bottles (intravenous fluids)," Lata said while standing outside their house,
a temporary shanty with a tin roof.
Scientists have linked the early onset of an intense summer
to climate change, and say more than a billion people in India and neighbouring
Pakistan were in some way at risk from the extreme heat.
India suffered its hottest March in more than 100 years and
parts of the country experienced their highest temperatures on record in April.
Many places, including New Delhi, saw the temperature gauge
top 40 degrees Celsius. More than two dozen people have died of suspected heat
strokes since late March, and power demand has hit multi-year highs.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called on state governments
to draw up measures to mitigate the impact of the extreme heat.
Tundre and Lata live with their two young children in a slum
near the construction site in Noida, a satellite city of New Delhi. They moved
from their home state of Chhattisgarh in central India to seek work and higher
wages around the capital.
On the construction site, labourers scale up walls, lay
concrete and carry heavy loads, using ragged scarves around their heads as
protection against the sun.
But even when the couple finish their day's work, they have
little respite as their home is hot, having absorbed the heat of the sun all
day long.
Avikal Somvanshi, an urban environment researcher from
India's Centre for Science and Environment, said federal government data showed
that heat stress was the most-common cause of death, after lightning, from
forces of nature in the last twenty years.
"Most of these deaths occur in men aged 30-45. These
are working class, blue-collar men who have no option but to be working in the
scorching heat," Somvanshi said.
There are no laws in India that prevent outdoor activity
when temperatures breach a certain level, unlike in some Middle-Eastern
countries, Somvanshi said.
- Reuters
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