CM Adityanath instructs officials to safely convey migrant workers to their homes

Yogi Adinath takes special initiative to bring migrant workers back

Friday, 8th May 2020

Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adinath gave categorical directions to the various officials in his state on this Thursday to make the necessary arrangements pertaining to the migrant workers as well as their families as scores of such workers- both young as well as old- continue to travel on foot to their home state, Uttar Pradesh covering many miles.

 Special, active attention is being given to the subject of bringing back stranded workers from big cities such as Delhi etc safely to UP; their native state in order to curb the incidents of them travelling day long and night long on foot to their native in the midst of the recent coronavirus crisis.

After the issuing of special orders from the CM’s office near about 172 migrant workers on their way back home from cities like NOIDA & Delhi were stopped at Bulandshahr of West UP by the UP police force last evening. A video of this incident was recorded on mobile cameras...in the video, one can catch sight of the migrant workers sitting on the road along with their families and many policemen surrounding them. Later, these workers were given food to eat and were shifted to a nearby college. The administration has assured them of arranging buses today to convey them safely to their home.

A similar incident occurred in West UP’s Firozabad where workers travelling back home from Haryana, Delhi and Rajasthan were stopped by police force. These migrant workers too were sent to a college in vicinity to the place and later were sent to their respective hometowns by means of special buses. Many among these migrant workers complained of pricey and unaffordable means of conveyance available on the Highway. Thus, the only option left with them is to travel back on foot. In this context it is worthwhile to quote Nitin Goswami, a migrant labourer belonging to eastern UP: "We are coming from Rajasthan's Alwar. We found a truck but the driver asked for money. He took Rs 100 for a 10-km journey. But the cops stopped the truck and we taken off the truck. We thought some proper food arrangements would be made but just some rice pulao was given to us in limited quantities" s. Nitin was journeying back home on foot along with his kid aged 2 years and his wife.

Since the start of the nationwide lockdown due to Covid-19 the state government has arranged for multiple state buses to bring back about 5 lakhs of such migrant workers successfully.

Uttar Pradesh is hoping to receive another 2 lakhs of such migrant workers soon as special trains have been launched by the Central Government in the past week to bring back stranded workers to their home towns. But despite these initiatives several migrant workers are compelled to undertake an on-foot journey back home along with their families as they are either not aware of the process to avail the government-aided bring-back transportation services or are not finding such special buses on the journey route they are following.

Source: NDTV