BHUBANESWAR: OPCC president Niranjan Patnaik has demanded that the state government should set a deadline for return of all the registered migrant workers as a large number of them are still stranded in their cities of work with little means of survival and no way to get back.
Patnaik said Odisha needs at least 30 trains a day to bring the migrant workers back home as at the prevailing pace which involves 5 to 7 trains a day, would take more than six months.
“Keeping this in mind and considering the rapidly deteriorating state of the stranded migrants, we should have a blue print in place to deal with the situation,” he said in a letter to Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik.
He said the Government should have a plan for increasing the capacity of quarantine centres and health check-up centres to accommodate all the registered migrants.
Besides, the Government should have adequate provision of buses and local conveyance to transfer the migrant workers to respective quarantine centres in a seamless manner, he said.
So far, over 2.14 lakh migrant workers have returned to Odisha since May 3 by trains, buses and other vehicles.