E-Paper
MHA nudges states to help migrant workers with food, shelter amid lockdown
Covid-19: The Centre has asked state governments to role in the voluntary sector to help provide food packets to stranded workers and labourers.
The Union home ministry on Friday responded to reports of thousands of out-of-work labourers struggling to survive and heading back home with an advisory to state governments to take care of them. The home ministry advisory said states should provide “adequate support” to them including food and shelter and enable them to draw their entitlement of free rations.
“This would help prevent avoidable movement of such people,” a government statement said, referring to migrant agricultural labourers, industrial workers and other unorganized sector workers.
There have been moving stories of how labourers, who suddenly found themselves out of work after the Centre imposed the 3-week national lockdown, had struggled to reach their native villages, many of them after walking for 100 km.
Hours before Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla sent out the advisory, Union law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had also spoken about his concern for the plight of the migrant workers. He promised the government would act on concerns around their condition.
Ajay Bhalla’s advisory to the state sought to address some of the gaps.
It suggested that the states could involve government agencies and the voluntary sector to provide food and shelter to stranded workers as well as basic amenities like clean drinking water and sanitation.
It also advised the states to make these vulnerable groups aware of measures taken by the government including provision of free food grains and other essential items through PDS and streamline the distribution system.
The advisory also underlined that states should also make arrangements for uninterrupted supply of essential commodities to hotels, working women hostels so that they continue to live in existing facilities.
