Migrants stuck at screening centre after wrong info on Shramik special

The 70 are part of the over 300 migrants from south district who had reached the screening centre on June 11. While they get food and other essentials, they say the heat is unbearable during the day.

Bijay Tudu, 25, changed the position of his mat at least four times within an hour on Wednesday afternoon. He was trying to stay away from the hot summer in the long and wide-open corridor of the Chhatarpur screening centre, where a group of at least 70 migrants have been stranded for a week.

Migrants head towards transit buses at Tau Devi Lal Stadium for a Shramik Special train to the Bilaspur Chhattisgarh from Gurugram railway station, in Gurugram. (Yogendra Kumar/HT PHOTO)

The group was to board a Shramik Special train that would ferry around 1,300 migrants to West Bengal’s Howrah and Malda on Thursday (June 18), but due to a miscommunication between the coordinating agencies, they landed here a week earlier, on June 11.

Having vacated their rented accommodations, they said they could not go back with their belongings as they did not have any other place to stay. The migrants had decided to go back amid rumours of another lockdown.

This is one of the last few Shramik Specials, being run under a special arrangement between state governments to send stranded migrants to their home states, as most workers had already left. Until June 15, of the 450,000 migrants who had applied, around 315,568 had been sent back free of cost to 16 states in 243 special trains.

The 70 are part of the over 300 migrants from south district who had reached the screening centre on June 11. While they get food and other essentials, they say the heat is unbearable during the day.

“We reached here at 9 am on June 11. Around 2 pm, we were told that the train was not scheduled for the day and rather for a week later. Our landlord told us that he would give the room to someone else if we vacate. Though we had rented a cooler at the room, there was no point in going back,” said Tudu, who and his two siblings used to live in Okhla. They paid Rs 250 to an auto-rickshaw that dropped them at the centre.

He said his grandmother died on June 10 and he had told his family in Malda that he will reach in two days. “I had hoped to join my family during this time. We have to leave, as we could not have survived another lockdown,” said Tudu, who used to do plastering work but had not got any job even though the lockdown eased on May 31.

Last week, with a surge in the number of Covid-19 cases, speculation was rife that Delhi could have another lockdown. Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal had on Monday clarified that there were no lockdown plans for Delhi.

Some of the children slept with a piece of wet cloth on their faces to tackle the heat. Yasmin Begum, 34, fanned her two children, as the ceiling fan blew warm air. She said though food and even cold drinking water was available, it has been tough for the children.

“On June 10, we got a message that we should pack and be ready to reach the centre the next morning. It is only people like us who have to suffer at the end,” said Begum, who used to live on rent near Azadpur Mandi.

District officials said around 300 people reached here last week after an NGO wrongly informed them. “We told them there was no train on that day. Most people left but some said they cannot go back. We gave them an option to shift them to night shelters, but they did not want to move again with the entire luggage. We arranged for their stay and meals. The train will leave on Thursday at 6 pm,” said a senior official, who did not wish to be named.

According to Sunil Kumar Aledia, an activist who works for the homeless and has been coordinating with the government to send migrants home said, “I had given a list of people to the nodal officer for West Bengal and I was told that the train leaves on June 11. They should have clarified in time to save them from the suffering.”