Moved by the plight of migrant labourers during lockdown restrictions, a group of professionals, including professors, students and industry leaders have come up with a web and mobile platform to help migrants find work and return to worksites immediately.
The cross platform application ‘MoSahay’ captures information on migrant workers on two fronts — their skillsets and their COVID-19-immunity status or basic health information.
“Most companies now acutely require workers, and migrants desperately need their livelihood back. MoSahay can bridge the gap,” said Himanshu Sahu, who works with IBM.
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The skill card captures 308 skills demanded across 24 industries. “We stumbled upon the idea when we came across news about migrant workers laboring hard to return to Odisha in wake of the COVID-19 pandemic in March ... we thought what would they earn if they overstayed in their villages,” said Debi Prasad Dogra, an assistant professor of computer science at IIT-Bhubaneswar.
As advised by Bijay Sahoo, president of Reliance Industries Limited, the team comprising IIT professor Manoranjan Satpathy, entrepreneur Suraj Kumar Gantayat, some other professionals and about 30 students from IIT and other universities, started working together on a virtual platform.
“Students and entrepreneurs like Mr. Gantayat came together to form the backend team and played a key role in developing the application. I worked on the analytics part ... The application is available in three languages – English, Hindi and Odia,” said Mr. Dogra.
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He said the application needs only contact details and some basic information on skills. It does not ask for any personal details. The information would be handed over to the government and industries which are in need of manpower.
“We have collaborated with industry bodies like CII and FICCI, which have an extra reach in the industries as well as the government sectors. They can benefit from the database,” he said.