UP Govt arranges 1,000 buses for stranded migrant workers
29 Mar 2020 08:54:34
LUCKNOW :
THE Uttar Pradesh Government has arranged for 1,000 buses to ferry migrant labourers who are stranded on the border districts owing to a countrywide lockdown, an official spokesman said on Saturday. Officials of the Transport Department, bus drivers and conductors were contacted on Friday night to help the people who were stranded in Noida, Ghaziabad, Bulandshahar and Aligarh, among other places, he said.
“Till late in the night, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath was busy issuing instructions for arranging buses for the purpose,” the spokesman said, adding that the CM also directed officials to arrange for food and water for such people and their families. On Saturday morning, senior police officers reached the Charbagh bus station in Lucknow to ensure that those arriving there were provided with food and water.
The buses later left for Kanpur, Ballia, Varanasi, Gorakhpur, Azamgarh, Faizabad, Basti, Pratapgarh, Sultanpur, Amethi, Rae Bareli, Gonda, Etawah, Bahraich and Shravasti. State’s DGP Hitesh Chandra Awasthi and Lucknow Police Commissioner Sujit Kumar Pande were personally present at the bus station to monitor the arrangements, the spokesman added.
Plea in SC seeking food, shelter of migrant workers
NEW DELHI :
THE issue of exodus of migrant workers has reached the Supreme Court. A PIL has been filed in the apex court seeking direction to the local administration/ police authorities across India to immediately identify stranded migrant workers and shift them to the nearest Govt shelter homes with proper food, water, medicines and under medical supervision, in a dignified manner, until the coronavirus lockdown continues. Advocate Alakh Alok Srivastava, the petitioner in the case, has urged the Centre to immediately redress the heart wrenching and inhuman plight of thousands of migrant workers families -- women, small children, elders and differently-abled persons -- walking on foot for hundreds of kilometers, from cities to their native villages: without food, water, transport, medicine or shelter, amid coronavirus crisis. The apex court is likely to take up this matter on March 30.