Telangana announces 40 trains daily for migrant workers
Hyderabad, May 4 (IANS) The Telangana government announced on Monday that 40 special trains will be operated from the state every day over the next one week to send migrant workers back to their respective states.
Chief Minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao announced the trains will be operated from Tuesday from various stations in Hyderabad, Warangal, Khammam, Ramagundam, Damaracharla and other places to Bihar, Odisha, Jharkhand, West Bengal and other states.
According to the Chief Minister’s Office on Monday night, he spoke to South Central Railway General Manager Gajanan Mallya and requested him to arrange for 40 special trains from Tuesday.
Rao held a review meeting on the problems being faced by the migrant labourers in the state due to lockdown. Medical and Health Minister Etela Rajender, Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar, Director General of Police (DGP) Mahender Reddy and others attended the meeting.
The meeting discussed the transport arrangements for the migrant workers expressing their desire to go back to their native places.
The state government had appointed senior IAS officer Sandeep Sultania and senior IPS officer Jitendra Reddy as special officers to oversee the travel of migrant workers to their native states.
The migrant workers have already registered their names with the local police stations to leave for their native places. Migrant workers who have registered their names with the police stations would be allowed to travel by the special trains. The details of the travel will be given at the police stations.
The Chief Minister said no migrant labour should feel anxious as the government had made arrangements for their travel to their native destinations. He instructed the police officers concerned to inform the migrant workers about the travel details and coordinate with them.
The first special train for the migrant workers was operated from Telangana on Friday last. The train with over 1,200 workers left from Lingampalli railway station near Hyderabad for Hatia in Jharkhand. All the workers were working on a construction site at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Hyderabad campus at Kandi in Sangareddy district.
Since then, there have been demands from migrant workers across the state for special trains to send them back to their respective states.
Migrant workers staged protests in Hyderabad and Ramagundam, urging the authorities to immediately arrange transport for them.
–IANS
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