Background
The onset of COVID 19 pandemic in India created an unrelated humanitarian crisis which no one including the Indian government had anticipated – The Migrant Worker crisis. The harsh lockdown enforced in India suddenly brought alive the age-old practice of migration for job opportunities that exist in India. Once lockdown was imposed these workers who were daily wage earners could not continue to live in the large metro cities (job pockets) and started the trend of reverse migration back to their villages amidst huge hardships.
COVID 19 Pandemic just made India aware and brought govt. focus on this invisible workforce – The Migrant workers
Getting India Back to Work
As migrant workers returned to their villages, many construction projects/factories were hanging in the lurch. The problem was not just the current pause, but of when they will manage to resume even after the lockdown is lifted. Expert opinion pointed to the fact that the daily wage earners aren’t going to come back very soon. Because they have absolutely no clarity about where to return for employment.
After what they’ve been through, they’ll be very wary of committing to a return, not knowing about where the active projects are. The prevalent practice for hiring migrant workers in India was via labour contractors who would control often engage in unethical hiring practices resulting in low pay and low focus on skill development for these workers.
Projects need labour to get back into action. The labour needs live projects to get back to work. It’s a circle that needs a technology platform to help break it. Clear information for both, can break the gridlock!
Our solution:
KaamWapasi - Platform
A multilingual platform, built to cater to the needs of blue collar workers and employers across India. Through this platform we aim to impact 1 MILLION people in India. The platform comes as
• Progressive Mobile Web app &
• Interactive IVR solution.
Both workers and employers can use the Web app or the IVR platform. Few of the top Employer categories are
- Construction
- Factory workers
- Delivery
- Waiters
Key features:
Every aspect of the platform is designed, keeping in mind the workers education qualifications, language barriers and familiarity with the mobile interfaces and IVR.
Web interface: WhatsApp Like Interface for easy onboarding. Workers can register their skills, choice of location, gender etc.
Voice based input
Voice bot solution will also help in onboarding workers with low or little literacy
Impact
Our model of Platform cooperativism has resulted in bringing together partners across diverse sectors and industries to come together in support of the initiative; not just for shirt term gains but mid to longer term social impact.
In a short span of 6 weeks we have upwards of 100,000+ workers registered of which more than 30,000 have created their skill based profiles on the platform. Profile creation goes a long way in protecting the legal rights of these hereto invisible workforce.
The platform boasts of more than 40,000+ jobs and already 14,000+ jobs have been matched to relevant worker profiles.