NEW DELHI: The Centre on Saturday created an online portal to streamline the movement and contract tracing of stranded migrants across the country. The National Migrant Information System (NMIS) portal will maintain a central repository of the migrants travelling from one state to other and aid in contact tracing. The Union Ministry of Home Affairs asked the states and Union Territories to upload data of migrants on the national portal and said the dashboard will help in better coordination, movement monitoring and contract tracing.
The ministry said that mobile numbers of people can be used for contact tracing and movement monitoring during COVID- 19. A unique ID will be generated for each migrant, which can be used for all transactions. The government of India nodal ministries can also monitor the movement of migrants though this portal. According to the Centre, key data pertaining to the persons migrating has been standardised for uploading such as name, age, mobile no, originating and destination district, date of travel which states are already collecting.
In a communication with state chief secretaries and administrators of states, Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla said the central government has already allowed the movement of migrant workers by buses and Shramik Special trains to enable them to travel to their native places.
Bhalla said the portal will maintain a central repository and help the sending as well as receiving state and district to ask for and give their acceptance in an online format seamlessly. “This system will help in speedy communication between states without creating additional work at the level of the field officers. It has additional advantages like contact tracing, which may be useful in overall COVID response work,” he said.
‘Will visualise movement’ Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla said states will be able to visualise how many people are going out and how many are reaching their native states