Andhra Pradesh is bringing home 5,000 fishermen stuck in Gujarat

Amid the nationwide lockdown, the Andhra Pradesh government is bringing back home about 5000 fishermen stuck in Veraval, Gujarat.

Chief minister Jaganmohan Reddy, after reviewing their plight, has sanctioned Rs 3 crore from the CM Relief Fund for their safe return, one CMO official said.

AP has hired 64 buses to transport these fishermen to their native Srikakulam and Vizianagaram districts in north coastal Andhra. 20 of these buses would start from Veraval on Tuesday, officials said.

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The state government was providing essential goods like food items, blankets in addition to what their Gujarat counterparts were arranging for the migrant labour there.

Thousands of fishermen from AP, a state with a vast coastline, are engaged in fishing activities in the Arabian Sea by Gujarati businessmen. Like every year, many of them went to Veraval, a major fishing harbor in Saurashtra, about 3-4 months ago.

Since the announcement of the lockdown in March, these fishermen are stuck there without any income generating activities.

Andhra Pradesh COVID-19 cases at 1259

In a review meeting chaired by Chief Minister Jaganmohan Reddy on Tuesday, officials informed that 82 new positive cases have been recorded from the 5783 samples tested in the past 24 hours. A total of 80,334 tests have been conducted in the state so far.

While the national average in terms of positive cases recorded is 4.13 percent, the state average is 1.57 percent. The average death rate of the country is 3.19 percent and the state average is 2.46 percent. All these cases are from the containment zones, officials told the Chief Minister.

The health machinery is gearing up to set up the virus testing labs in Srikakulam, Prakasam and Nellore districts. Labs would also come up in Vizianagaram and West Godavari districts later. Nine such labs are already operational in the state.