ROURKELA: The crisis handling skills of officials of the district administration and Rourkela Municipal Corporation (RMC) were put to test as a Shramik Special train from Tiruppur in Tamil Nadu arrived here with more than double the anticipated passengers on Monday.
The train, with stoppages at Rayagada, Balangir, Sambalpur and Rourkela brought in 699 migrants including a few women.
As the officials had not expected such huge rush at the railway station, they hurriedly made arrangements for screening, food and transportation of the passengers. While 72 of the migrants, who arrived in the train were from Sundargarh district, 617 were from other districts of the State and two each from West Bengal and Bihar.
RMC Commissioner and nodal officer for Covid-19 Dibyajyoti Parida said the workers were sent to their respective destinations by buses. The natives of Bihar were dropped at Birmitrapur border while the ones from West Bengal were sent to Mayurbhanj district on a bus. He said none of them had any symptom of coronavirus.
On May 21, the first Shramik Special train to the city from Tamil Nadu, arrived with only 59 workers while a couple of days back another such train had brought in 93 migrants from Gujarat.
Meanwhile, the SER has geared up to run two express and as many mail trains through Rourkela on the Howrah-Mumbai main line. SER Area Manager informed two Up trains and as many Down trains would have halt at Rourkela between 11 pm to 7 am. The trains are 02809/02810 Howrah-Mumbai Mail and 02833/02834 Ahmedabad-Howrah Express.