'Arrange special trains, send migrant workers home': Maharashtra CM urges Centre amid COVID-19 lockdown
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Uddhav Thackeray, the Chief Minister of Maharashtra, on Tuesday appealed to the Centre to arrange for "special trains" to send the migrant labourers back home to their native states as staying away from their families amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19)-necessitated lockdown is taking a toll on them.
The Maharashtra Chief Minister presented his demands while speaking over video conference to the Inter-Ministerial Central Team (IMCT) dispatched to Mumbai on Tuesday for an assessment of the state government's efforts in tackling the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, which is spreading like wildfire across India.
Thackeray said that as of now, the Maharashtra government is taking care of as many as six lakh migrant labourers in the state, providing them with food, shelter, and medical assistance in relief camps. However, Thackeray said, if the Central Government is anticipating a rise in the transmission of the virus between April 30 and May 15, special trains must be arranged to send them back home and relevant guidelines pertaining to this must be issued by April-end.
It may be recalled that, on April 18, over one lakh migrant sugarcane workers were allowed by the Maharashtra government to go back to their villages after a medical check-up. The state government had also directed the sugar factory owners to make the arrangements for the travel and food of these workers.
The Maharashtra Chief Minister has also appealed to the Centre to arrange for additional Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) kits and ventilators and also to relax the foodgrain distribution rules to extend it to those who do not have ration cards.
Uddhav had withdrawn relaxations to the lockdown protocols earlier provided in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) and Pune after the central team raised objections to this, pointing out that Maharashtra is the worst-hit state in India and the control of the outbreak here would speak volumes about containing the contamination in the country.
Notably, as the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic outbreak continues to spread like wildfire across India, the state of Maharashtra has emerged as the epicenter of coronavirus spread where cases have crossed the 5,200-mark. Mumbai, the financial capital of the country, has become the hotbed of the coronavirus spread in the state. One of the real challenges in Mumbai is controlling the disease contamination in Asia's biggest slum -- Dharavi, which is an extremely densely-populated region.
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