Heat, official apathy add to homebound migrants’ woes

Prayagraj: Migrants native to Uttar Pradesh continued their homeward journey on Thursday as well, some of them on foot, while others packed in trucks, after being stranded in various states for days because of the lockdown.
Many of these were spotted looking for roadways buses to take them to their home districts. On Thursday, migrant workers continued to flock to the city from stateslike Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka and Maharastra.
TOI spotted a group of migrant workers on Sardar Patel Marg searching for roadways buses so that go to their respective homes in Gorakhpur, Bahraich, Deoria and Kushinagar.
One of the them, Sumit, said, “I paid Rs 3,000 to a truck driver to take me from Hyderabad to Prayagraj. When we reached the city border, we were told that we could get buses near Station Road. However, when we reached there, police told us to go to Maharana Pratap Marg if wanted to board a bus for Bahraich and Gorakhpur. At the crossing near Maharana Pratap Marg, two policemen on duty asked us to leave the spot.” Shankar Lal, a migrant and a native of Kushinagar said, “A truck driver dropped me and 12 others in Gohania near Shankargarh. He told us he couldn’t take us any further as police were conducting a checking drive. We started from Vijaywada and changed trucks to reach here.”
There were many other workers who said they were running out of money. However, despite the hardships, they had rather head home.
The scorching heat isn’t making their trek back home any easier. Nandita, who haild from Bahraich and works in a construction firm near Vijayanagaram in Andhra Pradesh, said she and her husband had been working since the last five days to reach the UP-MP border. “We waited for several days for government to make arrangements for us to go back. However, when no help came, we decided to walk on May 7,” said a migrant worker walking along with Nandita.
A few of them managed to get a seat in the crowded trucks or DCMs. “There has been no work for over a month now. The contractors have not paid us anything. We started running out of money. Despite our efforts, we could not arrange a vehicle. At last we decided to leave the place by walking,” said Raju, who works as a carpenter in AP.