Migrant workers are entitled to public health care services even when they are working away from home. But lack of identity cards and the location of brick kilns on the outskirts of villages, cuts them off from rural healthcare schemes and services, with women and children at kilns most impacted.
Women workers are required to have a Mamta card - a health card for pregnant women and lactating mothers that records antenatal care and essential vaccines - or Aadhaar, India’s social identity card. But many workers do not travel with these documents fearing losing them.
Despite a plethora of schemes for maternal health, migrant women, mainly from Bihar, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, who had travelled to the kilns in Mathura could not access even basic health check-ups which the ASHAs provided routinely to village residents just 1-2 km away from the kilns.
This reporting was supported by Buniyaad a movement for a just transition in the brick kiln sector, which aims to bring social, economic and environmental stories related to equitable change in the brick kiln industry of Uttar Pradesh
STORY BY: ANUMEHA YADAV
VIDEO PRODUCTION: DEEKSHITH R PAI
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