LUCKNOW: A day after the Yogi Adityanath government announced that it would bring back UP labourers stranded in other states, the first batch of 2,224 workers, who had completed quarantine period of two weeks in Haryana, were brought back to the state in the first phase of the exercise on Saturday.
UP CM Yogi Adityanath had, on Friday, asked DMs to prepare a list of labourers so that they could be brought back in a phased manner. The decision had come after that state government brought back around 10,800 students stuck up in Kota, Rajasthan, around a week back.
The state government conceived the plan to bring the labourers back in response to the demand made from several quarters and also reports that the migrants had started swimming across the Yamuna from Haryana to reach UP.
According to Additional Chief Secretary (ACS), Home, Awanish Awasthi, the state government had arranged 82 buses of UPSRTC to evacuate the labourers from Haryana. All those, who entered UP on Saturday, belong to 16 different districts.
They all were dropped off in their native districts where they would be screened and tested for coronavirus. “Following all the medical procedures, the migrant labourers would be quarantined at government shelter homes in their respective districts for two more weeks. Only after serving the two-week quarantine period, they would be allowed to go home,” said the ACS.
Moreover, all the district administrations have been directed to send the labourers off with a kit of food grains and other essential items and also Rs 1000 in cash.
The ACS claimed that the next batch of 11,000 labourers would be brought back to the state on Sunday. Notably, as per an estimation, over 5-10 lakh migrant labourers quarantined in different states are expected to be evacuated in the days to come.
Around 2 lakh migrant workers, who had reached the state after implementation of lockdown in the last week of March, have been sent into home quarantine after completing two weeks of isolation at government facilities.
While spelling out the plan, CM Yogi Adityanath directed the officials to get in touch with other state governments and prepare a state-wise list of such workers and present a phase-wise plan within three days for bringing them back.
At a meeting with his Team 11 on Saturday morning, the CM reiterated his directives to the officials for sanitising the shelter homes and make arrangements for the food and other basic needs of those workers who would be quarantined after being brought back.
The CM has issued directives to district administrations to create shelter homes at district level with quarantine facilities. He also cautioned them against the attempt by the quarantined workers to flee the shelter homes.