The Coronavirus pandemic has brought the world to a standstill. As the weeks pass us by, the situation has only been worsening and turning harder for workers and employees across industries.
While several organisations and individuals belonging to the Tamil film industry are collecting funds and helping daily wage workers, director Pawan Kumar has been raising funds for workers of the Kannada film industry.
He announced that he would be doing so through a live chat on Instagram last Sunday, on March 22. While Manasaare, Parijatha fame actors Aindrita Ray and Diganth Manchale had joined Pawan Kumar for the live chat at 10 am, Popcorn Monkey Tiger actor Daali Dhananjaya and Lucia, U-Turn fame composer Poornachandra Tejaswi had joined him at 12.30 pm.
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The director has so far collected around Rs 8 lakhs and has decided to give out the money to the neediest workers from the 17 departments that work on a daily basis. This includes makeup, costume, lightmen, dancers, outdoor unit, art assistants, carpenters, painters, still photographers, managers, and supporting artists.
He has reportedly spoken to senior officials of the unions and actor-social worker Chetan Kumar, who has worked for the betterment of workers, and chalked out a plan to help them. Instead of providing all the workers equally with a meagre share, they have decided to identify workers from each department who are deprived of basic needs without income and provide them with Rs 2000 immediately.
A share of the money that he received has been given by popular actors, directors, and producers of the Kannada film industry, disproving rumours that the cine industry hadn’t contributed to the fundraiser.
The director had also gone live with his film U-Turn’s lead actor Shraddha Srinath on Instagram. The duo acted out a love story titled Adam and Eve written by the director and intended on making viewers aware of the fundraiser.
On Saturday, the director posted on Facebook that he was facing trouble with the limit of UPI transactions that could be performed in a day.
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“Damn … Arghh… The UPI freaking limits. I have 7.7 lakhs sitting in my account to be given out to daily wage workers who are all requesting for money. And I am unable to give it to them on time bcoz of all the security restrictions. I spent the whole of yesterday giving the money out to just 10 people, bcoz that is the UPI limit per day. I woke up at 5 am today to do another batch of 10, and I am still getting the same errors(sic)” read the post.
He also added that the other methods of money transfer did not seem either practical or quick enough and could not be considered as options.
“Raising the fund was easier than distributing it. Everyone who is reading this please create enough noise about taking out the limit on the UPI payment, I know it’s a security measure, but at least for the next 3 weeks it should be removed. UPI payment is the safest and fastest way to donate money to people in current times. ANY IDEAS(sic)” he added.
On Sunday morning, the director announced that he would be doing a bulk NEFT payment to a random 350 workers out of the 800 workers whose details he had managed to acquire.
Read: Stars Contribute Lakhs After FEFSI’s Statement On Daily Wage Workers