“State governments should request migrant workers to remain where they are”: PM Modi

As state after state imposes COVID-19 restrictions, curfews and lockdowns, migrant workers have started to leave cities in droves and head back to their towns and villages. For the past 10 days, Gaon Connection has been reporting on this reverse migration.

Gaon Connection
| Updated: April 20th, 2021

“I urge migrant labourers to remain where they are," PM Modi said in his address to the nation tonight. (Filed pic)

In his address to the nation tonight on the current COVID-19 situation in the country, Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi urged migrant workers to remain where they are and said they would soon be vaccinated. Modi said that the state governments should request the migrant labourforce to not leave the cities and win its confidence.

“I urge migrant labourers to remain where they are… it will be easier for them to get the vaccines in cities. It will help them to continue with their work,” PM Modi said in his address. “Vaccines will be available for free in government hospitals. This will help the poor. Our effort is to keep the disruption to a minimum, both social and financial. Vaccines will be made available at a fast pace in urban areas,” he added.

Speaking on the medical oxygen shortage in the country, Modi acknowledged there was a severe shortage of oxygen and the government was working to overcome this deficiency. “We are working to increase supply and manufacture of oxygen,” he said. He also thanked all the doctors, para-medical staff, sanitation workers, police and healthcare workers.

The prime minister has urged migrant workers to not leave cities and remain where they are, a section of migrant labourforce is already on its way back home. 

Migrant workers are leaving cities. Pic: Arvind Shukla/GC

On April 10, Gaon Connection reported how the fear of lockdown was making migrant workers leave Delhi. Most of them were stranded in the city during the last year’s lockdown. 

Darr hai ki iss baar bhi wahi haal hoga, bahut dukh jhela hai humne [I fear the same scenario will repeat, we have already suffered a lot],” Mani Ram had told Gaon Connection on April 9 when he was waiting to board a bus from Anand Vihar in Delhi to his native place Sant Kabir Nagar in Uttar Pradesh. 

Ram said he had accumulated a debt of Rs 15,000 [during the last lockdown], which he had just managed to pay off. “If there’s a lockdown again, I will have to borrow money to survive, and then spend all of next year paying it off. I can’t keep doing this, and so I am planning to go back home,” he said.

Also Read: The trauma of last lockdown still fresh, migrant workers make a beeline for home 

Yesterday, after Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal announced a week-long lockdown in the national capital, panic-stricken migrant workers boarded packed buses and left the city for their hometowns. 

Yesterday Arvind Kejriwal announced imposing a week-long lockdown in the national capital. Pic: Arvind Shukla/GC

“There is no question of us staying back,” Chandrabhan, who waited at Anand Vihar yesterday (April 19) to board a bus to Balrampur in Uttar Pradesh said. “What will happen in the future? What will happen if the lockdown is extended to two, three, four months? Where will we stay, what will we eat,” he asked.

Also Read: Delhi CM Kejriwal announces week-long curfew, triggering an exodus of panic-stricken migrant workers

This morning, Gaon Connection met a number of migrant workers at who had just reached the Kaiserbagh Bus Depot in Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh, after travelling through the night. 

“As soon as we heard of the lockdown, we decided to return home,” Kuldeep Yadav told Gaon Connection. “We boarded a bus from Anand Vihar in Delhi and travelled on the roof of the bus as there was no place inside. It was a private carrier and we were charged twelve hundred rupees each to travel from Delhi to Bareilly,” he said. Yadav, along with his infant daughter and wife, was headed to his village Jagdishpur in Amethi, Uttar Pradesh.

Also Read: “We will eat sookhi roti and namak, but at least we will be home”