Over 15,000 migrant workers coming back to state daily, says state home minister Deshmukh

More than 15,000 migrant workers are returning to the state daily after leaving it during the coronavirus-enforced lockdown and the number is expected to rise, said

More than 15,000 migrant workers are returning to the state daily after leaving it during the coronavirus-enforced lockdown and the number is expected to rise, said Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh on Thursday.

HT Image

“As a lockdown was imposed to fight the coronavirus outbreak, a large number of migrant workers went back to their respective states. Since the state government has eased restrictions, following which business and industrial units have started their operations, migrant workers have also started returning. 15,000-16,000 workers are coming back to the state daily,” Deshmukh said.

He further said the state government gets a list of workers who are coming back from their respective states. “Based on that, we make a list along with their address, screen them with thermal devices and asked them to stay at home for 14 days after inking them with ‘home quarantine’ stamps,” Deshmukh said.

Till the first week of June, the state government had sent around 18 lakh migrant workers back to their respective states, such as Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Karnataka, Chhatisgarh, Assam, Jammu, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Uttarakhand, Andhra Pradesh, Manipur, Kerala, Himachal Pradesh, Telangana, Tripura and Mizoram. Of them, around 12 lakh workers returned to their home states through 826 Shramik trains and around 5.38 lakh workers were sent back with the help of 44,106 trips of State Transport (ST) buses.

Maharashtra has so far reopened over 60,000 industries since relaxations from lockdown were granted and have employed close to 15 lakh people in these units.