Agencies
Lucknow May 6:
Nearly 35,000 of Uttar Pradesh’s migrant workers, stuck up in various places across the country amid the coronavirus-triggered lockdown, were to reach back home on Wednesday.
While 19 special trains carrying workers have already reached various places in Uttar Pradesh from different states, nine more trains are to reach later tonight, said Additional Chief Secretary Awanish Chandra Awasthi.
Asked about the total numbers of migrant workers reaching home in the state on Wednesday, Awasthi said each train is carrying around 1,200 to 1,250 workers.
As per Awasthi’s figures of passengers being carried by each train, an estimated 33,600 to 35,000 workers were to reach home by late Wednesday night.
The Uttar Pradesh government has already made arrangements of bringing 38 more trainloads of its workers from other states in the next few days, the additional chief secretary said, adding with this a total of 66 trains will be bringing the workers back.
He said 19 trains, reaching Uttar Pradesh, have arrived at Agra, Kanpur, Lucknow, Jaunpur, Allahabad, Bareilly, Gorakhpur and Ballia railway stations among others.
Nine trains will be coming from Punjab of which two from Jalandhar and Ludhiana have already started, he said adding 13 trains from Gujarat have already arrived.
Four trains have already come from Maharashtra and seven others will be arriving soon, he said adding that one train from Karnataka (Bangalore) has started on Wednesday and will be reaching Lucknow soon.
Two trains from Telangana have started and will be reaching Gorakhpur and Barabanki.
We have done the needful on our part for running the Shramik Trains from Kerala and it will be starting from there soon, he said.
Awasthi said the Uttar Pradesh is also talking with the governments of Odisha, Bihar ,Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh to make arrangements to bring back its migrant workers home.
An agreement has been reached to bring back remaining 30,000 workers from Haryana by roadways buses and 10,000 others from Rajasthan. he said.
Clear directives have been issued to authorities concerned to ensure proper medical testing of returning workers before sending them to their native places where they will have to stay in home quarantine, Awasthi added.
Earlier reports reaching here said over 4,700 migrant workers reached various places in Uttar Pradesh, including Ballia , Gorakhpur and Lucknow on special trains from different parts of Gujarat.
While 1,250 labourers arrived in Ballia on a train from Rajkot, another 1,262 reached Lucknow on a train from Anand, officials said.
Uttar Pradesh State Roadways Transport Corporation (UPSRTC) buses were arranged to take labourers home from railway stations, they said.
Another special train carrying migrant labourers from Viramgam (in Ahmedabad) carrying 1,234 labourers arrived in Lucknow.
Over 1,000 migrant labourers reached Gorakhpur in a special train from Surat on Wednesday afternoon.
A decision to run these trains was taken by the Centre last week following repeated requests by several states.
