KALABURAGI: “If it is not possible to verify the documents and information to let us return to our homes, please erase the seal on our hands and return the documents. We will be more than happy to go back to Mumbai and let the fate decide our next step,” these were the angst full words of a migrant couple who were shouting at the officials collecting documents at the checkpost to fulfil the procedure of allowing in the migrants at the border.
As is the procedure, the personnel collect the documents like Aadhaar card to upload the details on Seva Sindhu app to send the migrant labourers who have arrived from Mumbai and Pune at Maharashtra- Karnataka border on Monday. Sources said that in the last three days, 3,000 such labourers has arrived at the border, longing to return home.
Migrant labourers who have started coming from Mumbai and Pune to Kalaburagi and Yadgir districts through border village Hiroli of Aland taluk (Kalaburagi district) are facing problem due to the shortage of officials as well as buses to carry them to their native villages.
It has become common to witness the buses, cars and even two-wheelers stranded on the highway. Many labourers who left their native in search of jobs in Mumbai in December, lost their bread in March due to the coronavirus outbreak. Somehow they managed to keep themselves for one-and-a-half month and it was just a week ago they started to travel back home as things became difficult.
However after the Karnataka and Maharashtra governments consented for the travel of migrants three days ago, not only the migrant labourers, people irrespective of class have started to drive back home only to escape from the damocles sword on their head. Due to shortage of buses, the NEKRTC is forced to throw social distance norms aboard to wind. This has also become a point of disappointment to the people who have come in cars. According to eyewitnesses, some people were taking a detour through agricultural fields to avoid checkpost and institutional quarantine.