Uttarakhand faces huge Covid-19 challenge as 3 lakh migrants prepare to return home
Uttarakhand is bracing itself for the return of about three lakh of its residents stranded outside amid fears that many be infected.
As Uttarakhand continues to evacuate its residents stranded in different places, checking the spread of Covid-19 will prove to be a Herculean task for the government with three lakh migrants poised to return home, official said Monday.
The state government has been bringing its migrants from various states of the country in buses and trains. It has brought back about 34,000 migrants till Monday morning by state transport buses with 2,400 more to reach after the first two special trains left Surat and Pune Monday.
A senior government official privy to the developments in the evacuation of migrants said on the condition of anonymity, “The state government is expecting the return of at least 3 lakh migrants back with every online registration comprising about two-three persons each on average.”
The official said, “Though the government had shown its commitment to bring all of them, it will be a Herculean task for it considering the limited resources of the small Himalayan state.”
Estimating the number of buses and trains required to bring all of them, he said that “At least 100 trains and 3,000 buses will be needed to bring all of them while maintaining precautions amid the pandemic.”
“The government at present is working on a war footing with most of the available resources being pressed in the evacuation. We have been already running buses from Rajasthan, Haryana, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh where most of our residents are stranded. In the far away states like Gujarat, Maharashtra, Telangana and Kerala, we had asked for special trains which are being run gradually,” said the official.
He also said that there is also another challenge of taking the migrants to their home within the state once they reach here from outside.
“Resources are needed not only to bring them back but also to send them home in the state. And this is to be done after all those mandatory screening and precautions in which thousands of our health workers are involved,” he said.
Chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat also acknowledged that the state faces a big challenge because many of those returning to the state would be infected. “The state is expecting at least 2-2.25 lakh migrants to return of which about 25,000 are expected to be infected.”
Minister and government spokesperson Madan Kaushik who has been monitoring the evacuation process and state’s response to the pandemic, refused to reveal the total number of migrants who have registered with the government to return.
“We cannot reveal the total number of migrants but the total number of registration which is about 1.87 lakhs. But yes, it is a big challenge for our government to bring all our residents safely while following the precautions,” said Kaushik.
