CHENNAI: The Royapuram zone of Chennai Corporation is bursting at its seams. Being the worst hit as far as COVID-19 is concerned, the zone, which houses both Central and Egmore Railway Stations is ill-equipped to accommodate the influx of migrant workers.
Migrant workers from neighbouring Puducherry, Chengalpattu, Gummidipoondi and Mahabalipuram are arriving in Chennai to board trains to their hometowns in other States. Several of them travel by foot, reaching Chennai at odd hours and finding that they have nowhere to go for taking shelter.
On Saturday and Sunday, the Corporation’s shelter at Kannappar Thidal was at full capacity with around 120 people sleeping inside the shelter and another 100 sleeping outside on the concrete floor. By Sunday, many of them were shifted to a shelter in Tiruvottiyur zone. “We don’t know what time our train is. We walked for two days to get here from Chengalpattu where we worked. We reached here early on Sunday morning, but haven’t been informed when our train will be,” said Naveen Jha, who is waiting to reach Bihar, the place where he is from.
As on Saturday, Royapuram recorded a total of 2,589 COVID-positive cases, the highest among all zones. This raises concerns of the peoples’ safety who are coming in huge numbers everyday. Vijay, a city resident, who is helping migrant workers reach their destinations, said, “I usually accompany migrant workers until they find a shelter. Of late, all the shelters are full and on one night the local staff asked the workers to stay in Bharathi Women’s Arts College, which is a quarantine facility for COVID-19 patients. We refused and demanded a different place.”
According to Corporation officials, migrant workers were initially accommodated in 12 places within the Royapuram zone, including community halls.“Sometimes, group of 70-100 people come suddenly and we will have to arrange accommodations. We have accommodated many such people in schools like Don Bosco’s and St Paul’s, Vepery,” said a corporation official. “Now, we have also begun shifting them to neighbouring zones like Tiruvottiyur and Tondiarpet,” the official added.
When contacted, a senior Corporation official said that so far, 90,000 migrants have been sent from Chennai in 65 trains.“We earlier had accommodated about 2,500 migrant workers. The number has doubled to over 5,000 in the last ten days. When they suddenly turn up in large numbers, we are caught by surprise,” the official said.
However, vacant centres that can accommodate migrant workers are being identified.“We have already organised three fast track teams - one for each region (North, South and Central) to coordinate and take workers to the nearest relief camps,” the official said.