Crowded homes offer little chance of social distancing

Noida/Ghaziabad: Shelter homes in Noida and Ghaziabad are teeming with migrant workers, some of the facilities filled to several times their capacity.
In Ghaziabad, there are 51 shelter homes that can accommodate about 5,000 people in total. But most of them are overcrowded as the fresh wave of migrant labourers walking along the highways from faraway towns in Punjab and Haryana has been housed in them.
“Since Ghaziabad is a transit hub, thousands of migrant labourers use it to travel to Bihar and UP. And since we have made arrangements for bus and train services, people are flocking here in huge numbers. Though we have set up temporary shelter homes in different parts of the district, the overwhelming numbers have made it almost impossible to follow social distancing norms,” an official said.
In Noida, close to 500 migrant workers are camping in the shelter homes run by the district administration. While a total of 28 shelter homes had been set up to house stranded migrant workers, 16 of them are functioning at the moment. The remaining were shut down after workers left for their homes in buses during the third phase of the lockdown.
However, from May 14, these shelter homes have started filling up with fresh batches of workers. The administration has also issued guidelines to house migrant workers found walking on the expressways in the shelter homes. On Monday morning, these shelter homes had 463 additional workers. The numbers grew by evening.
The sub-divisional magistrate of Sadar area, Prasunn Dwivedi, said fresh batches of migrants have been arriving for the past few days. “They are registered with the jansunwai portal and arrangements to send them home are being made,” the officer said.