Criticising the Centre for charging migrant labourers who are heading home for their train tickets, Congress president Sonia Gandhi said that the state units of the party will bear the cost of rail travel of every worker and labourer headed home.
In a strong critique of the Centre's attitude towards the migrant workers, Gandhi said, “When our government can recognise its responsibility by arranging free air travel for our citizens stranded abroad, when the government can spend nearly Rs 100 crore on transport and food for just one public programme in Gujarat, when the rail ministry has the largesse to donate Rs 151 crore to the PM’s coronavirus fund, then why can’t these essential members of our nation’s fabric be given a fraction of the same courtesy, especially free rail travel, at this hour of acute distress?”
In a statement, Gandhi said her party has been emphasising since the outset of the lockdown that there needs to be provisions for safe and free rail travel of migrant workers and labourers to their home towns. “However, despite our repeated demands, the Central government and the rail ministry have chosen to completely ignore the same,” she said.
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The Congress leader said her party has taken a decision that every Pradesh Congress Committee shall bear the cost for the rail travel of every needy worker and migrant labourer and shall take necessary steps in this regard.
Gandhi held the Centre responsible for the plight of the migrant workers and labourers, saying it gave them barely a four-hour notice before imposition of the lockdown, denying them the opportunity to return to their homes. “Post the partition of 1947, this is the first time India witnessed a tragedy with such a massive human cost as thousands of migrant workers and labourers were forced to walk home several hundred kilometres on foot—without food, without medicines, without money, without transportation, without anything except for the desire to return to their families and loved ones.”
“Even today, lakhs of workers and migrant labourers are languishing in different parts of the country and wish to return to their homes and families but there is neither adequate money nor provision for free transport,” Gandhi said.