Centre: Ensure migrants don’t walk on rail tracks

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, May 11

The Centre today advised all the states and union territories (UTs) to ensure that hapless migrant workers “do not resort to walking on roads and railway tracks”. It asked them to counsel such individuals and also co-operate in running more Shramik trains carrying stranded labourers amid the nationwide lockdown.

Union Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla today wrote to chief secretaries of the states and the UTs in this regards following the unfortunate incident in Maharashtra where 16 migrants in a group of 20 were run over by a goods train last week while they were sleeping on a rail track.

Also an accident took place in Madhya Pradesh in which five migrant labourers were reported to have been killed and 15 injured when a truck they were travelling in overturned. They were coming from Hyderabad.

In the letter, Bhalla also referred to the meeting chaired by Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba on Sunday. “In the meeting, the situation of migrant workers walking on roads and railway tracks was noted with great concern,” he said in the letter. If migrants are found in such a condition, they should be appropriately counseled, taken to nearby shelters and provided with food, water, etc., till they are facilitated to board Shramik Special trains or buses to their native places, Bhalla said, while urging that the states should allow receiving of all Shramik Special trains “without any hindrance”.

Over 100 trains to run daily for migrants

Officials of the MHA, during a videoconference with nodal officers of the states and UTs on Monday, said migrant labour should be reassured that sufficient number of trains would be run for travel of all those wishing to go home. More than a hundred trains were expected to be run for them daily for the next few weeks.