3 special flights bring back stranded Odias to Bhubaneswar
BHUBANESWAR: Three Air Asia special flights brought flight-load of stranded Odia migrants from Mumbai, Imphal and Guwahati on Wednesday.
The Odisha government facilitated the return of the migrants from Imphal and Guwahati cities while Mumbai flight was sponsored by a group of parents from a school in Mumbai.
The Mumbai-Bhubaneswar flight arrived here at 8.25 am with 180 passengers while the second flight from Imphal that mostly carried plumbers and construction workers arrived here at 2.40 pm with 124 passengers. The Bhubaneswar-Guwahati flight will arrive at 11.30 pm. The migrants were taken to their respective districts in separate buses from the airport. The officers of Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) and other state government officials deployed at the airport for the purpose completed the formalities of stamping them and registering each one after arrival.
Official sources said due to lockdown situation Odisha government has undertaken a mission to safely bring back all the migrant workers stranded in different parts of the country. “Government decided that person stranded in remote parts from where train services are not available and travelling on road is not possible, will be evacuated by Air,” said a government communication.
According to officials the migrants were stranded in Tinsukia, Silchar, Dimapur, Kamarup and Siva Sagar districts of Assam and also in Meghalaya. There were also migrants working in Manipur, Tripura, Nagaland. Dedicated teams of officers from the state government intensively interacted with the respective state governments and also the migrant workers before being brought here.
A migrant Nagarjuna Behera, who was working as a plumber in Manipur and was stranded there due to lockdown said they had registered in the government portal for return. “We received a call that we will be flying back to our homeland in a special flight. We were asked to report at Imphal airport,” he told TOI. Behera and others travelled in a separate bus from airport to his native Rajkanika in Kendrapada district.
BMC commissioner Prem Chandra Chaudhury said according to the rule, among the migrant returnees, those from Bhubaneswar will be home quarantined. “In urban areas, the migrants will be asked to remain home quarantined and in rural, they will move to institutional centres. It is for the respective district administration to facilitate quarantine,” he said.