Nearly 5 lakh stranded people eager to return to Odisha: Official

A total of 4.86 lakh people

from Odisha, who are stranded in different parts of the country due to the lockdown, have registered their names with the state government, officials said on Monday.

The Odisha government has made registration mandatory for all those keen to return to Odisha, and launched a portal for this purpose.

"As many as 4.86 lakh persons have registered on this portal within 48 hours," Odisha's COVID-19 spokesperson Subroto Bagchi said.

He said the state government has appointed nodal officers in all the 6,798 gram panchayats and BDOs have been trained to facilitate the registration procedure of the stranded people, which include workers, students, patients and pilgrims.

 

The people who return to Odisha will have to undergo a 14-day quarantine period at the panchayat level, said pancahyati raj secretary D K Singh.

Meanwhile, during a video conference with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik suggested formulation of a standard operating procedure for seamless movement of people stranded in different states.

Odisha Health and Family Welfare Minister N K Das said he was optimistic the Centre will come out with a guideline, especially for the movement of migrant workers. He also said it will be wise to conduct coronavirus tests of the returnees at the place of their stay during the lockdown period.

Commerce and Transport Minister Padmanabh Behera said it would be difficult to transport all the stranded people by bus. "We have only 15,000 buses in the state. They may be used to transport people from neighbouring regions, but not from states like Gujarat, Maharastra and Tamil Nadu," he said.

Behera also said the Centre should consider running special trains to facilitate movement of the stranded people.

Bagchi added that the Panchayati Raj and Drinking Water Department has made functional 7,102 temporary medical camps/centres with 2.27 lakh beds, where the returnees can be placed under quarantine.