E-Paper
20 migrant workers jump off train in Odisha to evade quarantine
The state government had announced three days ago that it would be mandatory for returning migrant workers to be quarantined for 28 days after it took note of a longer incubation period for the Sars-CoV-2 virus that causes the disease.
At least 20 migrant workers returning to Odisha on a Shramik Special train from Ahmedabad, a coronavirus disease (Covid-19) hot spot in Gujarat, allegedly jumped off the train in Angul district on Sunday evening to evade the Odisha government’s 28-day mandatory quarantine enforced three days ago.
On Sunday evening, the train slowed near a railway bridge at Majhika in Angul district, when around 20 migrant workers jumped off. “Though at least 20 of them had tried to escape, we caught only seven and handed them over to the police,” said Birabara Nayak, the sarpanch of Benagadia gram panchayat.
Angul’s superintendent of police (SP) Jagmohan Meena said the seven people belonged to neighbouring Deogarh district. “They’re apprehensive of staying in an institutional quarantine facility for 28 days. They’ve been lodged at a quarantine centre in Angul district,” the SP said.
In a separate incident, a bus carrying 30 migrants from Odisha, who were coming home from Tamil Nadu’s Kanchipuram district, dropped 15 of them in Cuttack town on Monday morning instead of taking them to a quarantine centre in Jagatsinghpur district. The authorities put up six of them at a Cuttack college, which has been converted into a quarantine centre, and the remaining nine travelled to Jagatsinghpur district in an auto-rickshaw.
The state government had announced three days ago that it would be mandatory for returning migrant workers to be quarantined for 28 days after it took note of a longer incubation period for the Sars-CoV-2 virus that causes the disease.
The return of migrant to Odisha from Gujarat, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka has been blamed for a spike in Covid-19 positive cases over the past fortnight including 300 of the total of 391 reported from the state so far.
There have also been incidents of migrants fleeing quarantine centres in Odisha in the past week. For instance, 150 migrants in Ganjam district’s Beguniapada block fled the quarantine centre because of the poor quality of food and lack of potable water in the facility.Some migrants from coastal Bhadrak district, who came back from Gujarat’s Surat, got off the bus several kilometres ahead of the quarantine centre and went directly to their homes.
