Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has written to Chief Ministers of 18 states requesting them to provide basic amenities such as shelter, food and medical support to the workers of West Bengal stranded in their states due to lockdown.
In a letter written to Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, Banerjee wrote that Bengal has many workers-semi skilled and unskilled, working in different parts of the country. Due to complete lockdown in the country for COVID-19 pandemic, many Bengal workers could not travel back and are stuck at different places.
"We have received information that many such workers who are ordinarily resident of Bengal are stuck in your state too. We are getting SOS calls from them. They are generally in groups of 50-100 and can be easily identified by the local administration," West Bengal CM wrote in the letter.
"Since, it is not possible for us to reach any help to them, I take the opportunity to request you to kindly ask your administration to provide them with basic shelter, food and medical support during this period of crisis. We, in Bengal, are taking care of such stuck people in our State," she added.
She wrote that her Chief Secretary will pass on the details of such people to CM Thackeray's Chief Secretary to hasten up this entire process of humanitarian support in this hour of crisis. "May I request you to kindly see for appropriate action," she added.
The West Bengal Chief Minister has written similar letters to other Chief Ministers as well.
The Chief Ministers of 18 States are--Tamil Nadu CM Edappadi K Palaniswami, Odisha CM Naveen Patnaik, Telangana CM K Chandrashekar Rao, Karnatak CM B S Yediyurappa, Maharashtra CM Uddhav Thackeray, Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan, Himachal Pradesh CM Jai Ram Thakur, Punjab CM Captain Amarinder Singh, Uttarakhand CM Trivendra Singh Rawat, Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, Jharkhand CM Hemant Soren, Rajasthan CM Ashok Gehlot, Bihar CM Nitish Kumar, Goa CM Pramod Sawant, Gujarat CM Vijay Rupani, Chhattisgarh CM Bhupesh Baghel, Andhra Pradesh CM Y S Jaganmohan Reddy and Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath.