Anxious migrant labourers head home - Many walk hundreds of kms

GNN | Mar 30, 2020, 2:41 PM IST|

• Many of these labourers are employed with factories located in industrial estates of Odhav, Vatva and Naroda

Gujarat News Network

Ahmedabad, March 30, 2020: Exodus of migrant workers from Gujarat during natural and manmade calamities is normal. Now during the Covid-19 outbreak, thousands of anxious migrant workers who come to Gujarat from all over the country are making desperate attempts to go back home.

GNN learns exodus of migrant workers from Gujarat refuses to die down and this despite the fact the government is trying hard to provide them shelter and food.

But for the first time in Ahmedabad, migrant workers walking back to their native places were booked for violating IPC Section 188 and Section 144 CrPC at three police stations in Ahmedabad.

Two cases each were filed at the Karanj Police Station in central Ahmedabad and one at Paldi in western Ahmedabad. One person was booked in Naranpura also in western Ahmedabad. At the main Chiloda and Odhav check posts, many labourers were helped by police to board trucks heading to Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh (MP).

Meanwhile, with 3500 labourers insisting on returning to their dwellings in Ahmedabad all the 512 flats behind Rajpath Club are now vacant. The flats a part of the EWS housing complex were provided to the labourers as temporary accommodation.

Deputy Municipal Commissioner Mukesh Gadhvi said the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation arranged for 40 buses for these families and individuals and dropped them at their respective locations in the city.

Separately hundreds of labourers were seen heading back to their home states. Many of these labourers are employed with factories located in industrial estates of Odhav, Vatva and Naroda.

Two migrant labourers Ravindra Kumar and Hridayesh Kshatriya were going all the way to Etawah in Uttar Pradesh. “We have nothing to do here and our costs are mounting. There is so much uncertainty,” Kumar said.

Another two labourers Ramprasad Kevat and Shivraj Dangi, who had come walking from Kalupur to Chiloda, a distance of 30-km were seen trying to hitch a ride to Jhansi in MP. Kevat said, “The contractors who engaged us for construction work at Kalupur railway station did not help us. We want to go home,” an anxious sounding Kevat told TNN.

Even within the state of Gujarat, migrant workers want to return home. Take the example of Vinod Bhil, a tribal who came walking 51-km from Kadi taluka in Mehsana to Gandhinagar. “I plan to go back to my home in Jhalod. Life is getting tough here and there is no work,” Bhil says.

Similarly Krishna Choubey, a mason engaged in construction work at the Odhav fire station is now heading back to his native Gorakhpur in UP. He told TNN, “Eight years ago I lost my wife to an epidemic, and after that I migrated to Ahmedabad after a severe bout of depression. Now I am heading back home.”