Returning migrants not welcomed in UP villages

Blurb: Villagers panicking even though of 16.50 lakh returning migrants, just 764 have tested positive so far

Shahira Naim

Tribune News Service

Lucknow, May 22

Two migrants who had returned from Mumbai to their village in Khajuri Mirza in Ayodhya have quarantined themselves on a tree house.

When Gulsher Khan and Mahtab Khan returned from Mumbai on May 13, little did they know that they wouldn’t be allowed to enter their own village. Having no choice, they placed a cot on a mango tree in an orchard outside the village and are living there. Their families come to give them food and water.

Similar cases are being witnessed in district after district despite the fact that only a miniscule percentage of migrant workers (0.05 percentage) returning to Uttar Pradesh have so far tested positive for Covid-19 as per the statistics shared by Principal Secretary, Health, Amit Mohan Prasad.

Though a section of the media is projecting the returning migrants as “coronavirus bomb” causing villagers to panic, the statistics of the state government does not support such an alarming picture.

Until Friday, approximately 16.50 lakh migrants had returned home from various states through 1,300 Shramik Special trains. Of them until now, 764 migrant workers have tested positive, said Prasad, warning the situation could get out of hand if the protocol was not followed strictly.

The Gram Nigrani Samiti in villages and the Mohalla Nigrani Samiti in the urban areas have been entrusted the duty of ensuring that no migrant violates the 21-day quarantine period. Until now ASHA workers have visited 6,58,982 homes of quarantined migrants to examine them for symptoms of which 764 have been found symptomatic, said Prasad.

However, enforcing quarantine in the heat wave conditions is very trying. With the mercury hovering around 45 degrees, Mahendra of Sewta village of Jahanaganj in Azamgarh, who has recently returned from Telangana, is living under a plastic sheet in an open space outside his hut so that he does not infect his family.