Hundreds of daily wage labourers ventured out violating lockdown and congregated near Hatigaon Chariali here in search of work on Wednesday morning till they were chased back by police, all because they went out of means to meet their ends following two weeks of joblessness.

With allegedly “no aid from the government or NGOs”, the labourers, mostly belonging to minority communities, had all but threw the safety rules of the lockdown against spread of coronavirus in their struggle for survival.

Confirming the development, the police said a few truckloads of vegetables arrived at a storage near Hatigaon police station and all those people turned up to unload them.

“But, since there were already commissioned labourers with the warehouse, we asked them to go back,” said an officer.

“We have been without any work over the past two weeks. We have already run out of money and ration to feed our families. When we heard that some truckloads of vegetables arrived at the storage, we came out to earn for our survival,” said Junaid Ali.

Asked about aid from government, he said: “I live in Shah Nagar. We’ve got nothing. My landlord got it, but we’ve not.”

Similarly, Nirmal Sah of Bihari Basti said: “I work as a street vendor to somehow manage a living for a family of four. I’ve been out of work for nearly three weeks now and at least another week to go. I have my ailing mother for whom I’ve to buy some expensive medicines. All these have compelled me to venture out like this.”

When contacted, Kamrup (metro) deputy commissioner Biswajit Pegu rubbished the allegation of not receiving aid.

“Hatigaon and a few other localities have always been our priority. We have distributed ration to 31,000 families across the city. In certain pockets where our people could not operate, we took the help of local NGOs to ensure that not a single family was left out. Maybe, some of them have run out of supplied aid. In that case, we’ll distribute ration to them again. But they should not go out.”