HYDERABAD: If one problem ends, another begins. For migrant workers who are returning from the Gulf countries, there seems to be no end to the agony they are going through. Most of the Gulf returnees, who are being put up in city hotels to undergo a quarantine period, are being asked to move to Gandhi Hospital by the management if they are not in a position to pay the accommodation fee in advance.
Around 160 such workers, who arrived in Hyderabad from Kuwait on May 9, were shifted to different hotels in the city with three different price slabs. At the time of check-in, they were asked to pay the money in advance. Unfortunately, these migrants neither had the time nor the facilities to convert the foreign currency into Indian money due to the lockdown restrictions.
Srinivas, a Sircilla resident who returned from Kuwait, was asked to stay in a city hotel by paying `15,000 for the quarantine period. “When we were dropped at the hotel, the management insisted that we should first pay the amount. But none of us had Indian currency.”
“Then we approached the police who were posted at the hotel. But that was of no help. The hotel management as well as the police said that we will be shifted to Gandhi Hospital if we cannot pay the money,” he told Express.
Then Srinivas contacted his family in Sircilla, and only after they electronically transferred the money to the hotel, he was allowed to check in. “Some exemptions or facilities should be given and hotels should accept foreign currency,” he added.
Speaking about his stay at the hotel, Srinivas said, “As of now, we are being given food three times a day. A nurse comes daily to check our temperature.” When Srinivas and others landed at the airport, they were subjected to an elaborate health check up by airport officials.