We fear hunger, not coronavirus, say migrant workers

A day after the Union government allowed the railways to ferry inter-state migrant workers, hundreds of them came to the railway and bus stations to return to their homes in Bihar, UP and other states only to find that there was no such facility.

Arun Kumar Jha, a 53-year-old migrant, a vendor at the railway station, said they got the news through social media and rushed to the railway station.”In the last two months, we received food for only one week. We are running out of all our savings. We need to go back home at the earliest,” Jha said.

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Raju Das, a young construction labourer, said they had been trying to reach the nodal officers notified by the state government but none of them was receiving the calls. “We were first told to go to a police station to register for the journey. But the police said only BBMP officials can help us,” he said.

DH provided them with a copy of government order with phone numbers of the IAS and IPS officers designated for each district. Over the next 30 minutes, the workers tried to reach the officials appointed for Uttar Pradesh and Bihar but did not succeed. “We do not want to die here. Hunger is a bigger problem for us than the virus,” he said.

Revenue Department Principal Secretary R Manjunath Prasad, one of the four officials vested with overall charge of the movement of labourers, said nodal officers have been appointed to migrant colonies. “The officials will enrol the migrants in a portal after which their journey will be planned,”