'Those who call for war from far-off places should realise the repercussions it has on the people who are actually affected.'
To capture the information regarding movement of migrants and facilitate the smooth movement of stranded persons across the states, National Disaster Management Authority has developed an online dashboard namely, National Migrant Information System, on the existing NDMA-GIS portal
In his order, the DM said it had come to light that in the present situation of a complete lockdown, several landlords were forcing migrant workers to pay the house rent, leaving them with no other choice but to vacate the place.
In an order, Union Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla said buses shall be used for transport of such groups of stranded people and these vehicles will be sanitised and will have to follow safe social distancing norms in seating.
A day after opposition parties, including the Congress launched a scathing attack against the Union government and the railways for charging money from migrants for the travel, sources in the railways said the national transporter is spending around Rs 80 lakh per service for the special trains, and it has run 67 such trains carrying around 67,000 stranded migrants since May 1--- incurring an expenditure of over Rs 50 crore.
The earthquake caused widespread structural damage, toppling buildings, buckling roads, collapsing bridges, even breaching a dam.
If the Thackerays don't save a Marathi school in their backyard, who will, wonders Syed Firdaus Ashraf.
Local residents said a migrant labourer was injured in the incident, while a few houses in the area also sustained damage. Parts of the unidentified object were lying in the area, they said.
With lakhs of these workers stranded on highways and inter-state bus terminus, the government stepped in and asked states and union territories to immediately set up relief camps for migrant workers and others who are returning to their home states or trying to do so during the nationwide lockdown period.
'40 percent of voters in Bihar will be excluded.'
Uttam Ghosh asks why the PM Cares fund could not have paid for the train tickets of migrant workers on their way home when the government flew Indians stranded in different parts of the world for free!
All of them were sent to a shelter for medical examination and a bus was being organised for their further transit, he said. A video of workers emerging from the small hole of the cement-mixer in the presence of police has gone viral on social media.
Daily wagers are running out of resources, including ration and cash, and the state governments might not be able to sustain their needs for a longer period of time, given the lockdown has already been extended until May 3.
A controversy erupted on Monday after several opposition parties demanded that migrant workers should not be charged for the train tickets. While the Congress offered to pay for them, the Bharatiya Janata Party said the railways was already providing subsidised tickets bearing 85 percent of the travel costs.
24 migrant workers were declared dead on Saturday early morning when a trailer truck carrying sacks of lime along with people rammed into the back of a stationary truck with many migrant workers sitting in it near a roadside eatery on the national highway in Auraiya.
Speaker Awadh Bihari Chaudhary took a grim note of the unruly behaviour of some of the BJP MLAs who had entered the well and placed chairs on the table of the reporting staff.
'...yet struggles to convert that human capital into domestic productivity.'
'The government there at one point did not even permit migrant labourers to return...we do not want to say anything against anyone but the situation there was not handled properly'
He also rejected reports that have hinted possible increase in coronavirus cases due to migrants and asked, "Did corona not spread at places where migrants were not there?"
The labourers said there was no point in staying back in Gujarat without any income.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led central government will use the unorganised workers database - e-Shram portal - to provide the benefits of various government programmes to the nearly 300 million workers over the next five years, if it is voted to power for the third consecutive term in the upcoming general elections. "We have registered unorganised workers on the e-Shram platform. "We will reach out to the e-Shram registered 'shramik bandhu' and help them avail the benefits of various government programmes that they are eligible for," the manifesto of the party read.
A government official in Lucknow said Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath expressed grief over the incident and announced an ex gratia of Rs 2 lakh each to the families of the deceased migrants and Rs 50,000 to the seriously injured.
Expressing surprise over political parties not coming forward in filing objections related to 65 lakh excluded voters, the top court directed the chief electoral officer of Bihar to implead them in the court proceedings.
Qatar's construction industry is rife with abuse of migrant workers who are "treated like cattle" and live in squalid accommodation exposed to overflowing sewage, Amnesty International said in a report on Sunday.
The ministry of home affairs on Wednesday issued a fresh set of guidelines to let migrant workers, students, tourists and pilgrims stranded in different parts of the country to get back home.
'It is for the first time in Independent India that collection of information on caste is being done.'
Gandhi noted that lakhs of migrants continue to walk hundreds of kilometres to reach back their homes without food, water, medicines and cash. She also accused the central government and the Railways of completely ignoring the demands made by the Congress for ensuring the safe and free travel of migrant workers and labourers to their homes.
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear petitions challenging the Election Commission's decision to revise electoral rolls in Bihar. The hearing is scheduled for July 10.
Unless controlled and contained, given the untested belief that the north Indian labour support and follow the Hindutva kind of political ideology, there is a potential in terms of ideological clashes with their Dravidian brethren in the local neighbourhoods, and it all escalating into violence, especially during election time, predicts N Sathiya Moorthy.
On Thursday, the government wrote to Jharkhand, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Manipur, Tripura, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Odisha conveying it's decision and seeking their consent for receving the workers, official sources said.
Dominic Xavier is puzzled by the government revelation that it has no idea how many migrants died during the long and dangerous march home.
Shyel Trehan, an alumna of the 2000 batch of the National Law School, was one of the organisers who managed this near impossible achievement.
'What is going on is the under counting of the migration population in urban areas.' 'It has been going on in the last few censuses.'
Officials of the Transport Department, bus drivers and conductors were contacted on Friday night to help the people who were stranded in Noida, Ghaziabad, Bulandshahar and Aligarh, among other places, he said.
Left to its machinations, the BJP would have loved to cut Nitish down to size, but it can't afford to do so as the JD-U is in alliance with the BJP at the Centre, and cannot form a government on its own in Bihar. For now, both need each other: Nitish for legitimacy, the BJP for numbers, points out Ramesh Menon.
Justices Arif S Doctor and Somasekhar Sundaresan held there was nothing in the MCC that would interfere with the Board's ongoing activities.
All the 26 people working there were from the Malda district of West Bengal.
As the world awaits the end of the global pandemic, rural Bengal might be witnessing a recession unfolding in bits and pieces. With factories and tea gardens closing down, agricultural income falling and storm Aila ravaging a large part of deltaic West Bengal in 2010, migration gradually became a norm.
A court in Kerala has sentenced five men from Uttar Pradesh to life imprisonment and an additional 40 years in prison for the sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl from Kerala five years ago. The accused, who were migrant workers residing near the victim's home, were involved in the crime that occurred in 2020. They enticed the girl with the promise of a SIM card and then subjected her to sexual assault at various locations. The court also directed the convicts to pay compensation to the victim.
In one case, the folks at SWAN discovered that of the Rs 1,500 they'd transferred as relief in the account of a stranded worker, the bank had deducted Rs 800 as penalty for not having minimum balance!
