Lockdown: UP govt starts bringing back migrant labourers from Haryana

Deploys fleet of 82 buses to ferry nearly 11,000 workers, who will be given a ration kit and Rs 1,000 cash support

In less than 24 hours of announcing plans to bring back migrant labourers from Uttar Pradesh stuck in other states following the lockdown, the Adityanath government deployed a fleet of 82 buses to bring back such workers from Haryana.

So far, 2,224 migrant labourers with roots in UP have already arrived at the state borders, and by tomorrow, the total number is expected to touch 11,000 from Haryana alone.

“These workers, belonging to 16 districts in UP, would undergo medical check-up and then serve the mandatory 14-day quarantine before they are allowed to go home,” UP additional chief secretary Awanish Kumar Awasthi told the media in Lucknow this evening. He added that each of these labourers would also be given a ration kit and Rs 1,000 cash support.

The UP government has estimated that between 500,000 and one million migrant labourers and daily wage workers are expected to return over the next two months due to lockdown. Over the past month, over half-a-million workers have already returned from other states.

Yesterday, the state had announced it was planning to bring back workers who had already completed the 14-day quarantine in other states, in a phased manner. The respective state governments have been asked to facilitate their screening, before the workers are brought back to UP.

While the authorities are preparing the exhaustive list of such workers, the process of bringing them back has started with Haryana. 

Last month, Adityanath had written to his counterparts in 18 states, including Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Kerala, West Bengal, and Karnataka, urging them to arrange food and stay for UP-origin migrant labourers during the lockdown. Nodal officers were appointed for each of these states to coordinate with the respective governments and resolve the grievances of such persons.

The CM has also instructed the various departments to prepare concrete action plans for providing jobs in the rural areas to 1.5 million workers and labourers over the next 3-6 months.

He instructed officials to plan for creating jobs and self employment opportunities in the departments of horticulture, micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME), food processing and Khadi Gramodyog apart from one district one product (OPOP) scheme, national rural livelihood mission (NRLM) and Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA).

Recently, the CM had even constituted a committee headed by UP agricultural production commissioner (APC) Alok Sinha to draft a blueprint to provide local jobs to about half-a-million migrant labourers.

Apart from the migrant labourers returning to UP following lockdown, hundreds of thousands of others have also been rendered jobless within the state, including construction labourers, daily wage earners, street vendors, hawkers etc. So far, the state has disbursed cash handout of Rs 1,000 each to nearly 2.8 million people.