Labourers head home in special trains from Surat
Bhubaneswar: A ‘Shramik Special’ train carrying around 1,200 Odia migrant labourers from Gujarat started from Surat on Saturday afternoon. It is heading towards Jagannathpur station, on the outskirts of Berhampur. People boarded the train after health screening. The local administration also provided them food and water.
Another special train may leave Surat late on Saturday night or Sunday morning for Berhampur. Migrant labourers are getting enrolled to board it.
Around 10 am on Friday, a special train carrying 1,150 Odia migrants started from Aluva station near Kochi, Kerala. It will arrive in Odisha on Sunday morning and will have stoppages at Jagannathpur near Berhampur and Khurda Road. It will stop at Duvvada station in Andhra Pradesh for food and train maintenance works.
Manoj Kumar Mishra, IT secretary and commissioner rail coordination, told the media that the “Labourers coming from Kerala belong to 23 districts of Odisha. As many as 382 labourers out of the 1,150 are from Kandhamal district followed by 283 from Kendrapada district and 130 from Ganjam.”.
He said the state is carrying out Operation Subh Yatra to bring back the stranded Odia labourers. “Twelve teams were formed by the Kerala government to identify, register and screen the health of the migrant labourers. The team said these labourers had no symptoms of Covid-19. They were taken in buses to the railway stations by following social distancing norms,” he added.
Mishra said Kerala government has shared the details of the passengers with Odisha. “The 1,150 labourers have registered with Covid-19 portal of the state government. We have started making arrangements to take them to institutional quarantine homes in gram panchayats,” he added.
Chief secretary Asit Kumar Tripathy on Friday said stranded workers returning by trains will be received at certain specific railway stations. They will be shifted to the quarantine centres by the government team after check up. “We will send them in buses to their district and gram panchayats,” he added.
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