Guest workers protest in Tirupur, seek spl trains

May 5, 2020, 04:51 IST

Coimbatore: Over 100 guest workers gathered in front of the Tirupur railway station on Monday and demanded the state government run special trains for them to travel back to their respective states.
The guest workers, mostly from Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, pointed out Kerala’s example of sending its guest workers back in special trains over the last three days.
“If other states are sending workers back, why can’t the state government take steps to send us back?” asked a worker. “We do not expect any help from the government other than transporting us back to our respective states.”
Police officials rushed to the railway station to pacify the protesters. An official said the workers were insisting that they should be sent back home even after being assured that their food and shelter needs would be taken care of. The district collector has been informed of their common demand, a police officer said.
Subsequently, the district administration organized a camp at Jaivabai municipal girls higher secondary school to assist all workers in registering on portals of different state governments in order to get back home.
The district collector K Vijayakarthikeyan said, “We created a QR code for each state’s portal and pasted it on the school walls. We then asked the workers to register in the portal of their respective states using the QR code.”
The collector said close to 6,000 workers had registered at the camp.
An official from district administration said that once the registration process nears completion, both the state governments would hold talks on how to transport the workers and based on their decision, travel arrangements would be made.