A Kannada film director has launched an initiative to take care of the needs of daily-wage workers in the Kannada film industry during the lockdown period.

Giving details in a Facebook post on Saturday, Pawan Kumar, Director of Kannada films such as U-Turn and Lucia , said he has launched a website for the purpose.

How it works

The concept is loosely based on the dating app Tinder and uses UPI (unified payment interface) platform for payment to the Kannada film industry’s daily-wage workers. When a person visits the link, he/she gets the name of a worker, the union the worker belongs to, the age of the worker and the number of years the person spent in the industry along with the UPI id of the worker.

Pawan Kumar said it would be a different daily-wage worker every time a person visits the website. After paying somebody, it will get refreshed, and will put up the name of a different person, he said.

In his message, he urged people to donate as little as ₹50 each before breakfast and lunch every day. “If 1,000 people or 500 people do it, you are making him eat with you. A lot of them don’t have food for today,” he said.

On the trust issues whether the money reaches the needy, he said the daily-wage workers are continuously verified by his team members.

“All you have to do is to spend ₹50 per meal daily. Make it a practice for the next one month, or even after that,” he said, adding that those in the regular jobs will all get back to work once the crisis is over. However, those in film industry are the last one to get back to work as it is not considered essential.

Kannada film industry has been shut since March 19. Nearly 3,500 daily-wage workers are part of the industry. Here is the link for donations to Kannada film industry daily wage workers. http://www.hometalkies.com/help-kfi-workers/

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