Govt focus on fresh batch of 18k migrants registered with portal

Ranchi: With the Supreme Court indicating its intention to give 15 days to the Centre and the state governments to send home all migrant workers stuck across the country, Jharkhand government is busy arranging logistics to bring back a fresh batch of 18,000 migrants from over a dozen states across the nation.
After a portal was launched on May 2 for stranded migrants, the state government managed to bring back around 5 lakh of the 7.4 lakh who registered themselves, in flights, trains and buses. Upon arrival, migrants were advised home or institutional quarantine depending on the sensitivity of the case. The rest either returned on foot, cycles and auto-rickshaws or changed their mind and are not willing to come back now, said officials.
Between May 27 and June 3, the state government opened a second round of registration for migrants who wished to get evacuated. During this period, only 18,000 migrants registered to return to Jharkhand, revealed figures available from the state Covid-19 response centre at the state labour department.
A nodal officer at the Covid response centre said, “We have a fresh figure of 18,000 migrants who registered between May 27 and June 3 and we are coordinating with different states to facilitate their return. The major rush is from states like Gujarat, Kerala and Maharashtra, which have reported higher number of cases.”
He added, “Many of those who registered earlier had either come on their own or are now unwilling to come back. We are now focussing on cases who genuinely want to come back and avoid a rush by bringing all of them forcibly. Once this lot is brought back, we shall open the registration process again.”
The arrival of migrants led to the spike in the Covid-19 cases in the state and the tally crossed the 900-mark on Friday with a doubling rate of 8.53 days, which is higher than the national average of 15.48 days.
Talking to TOI, state labour minister Satyanand Bhokta anticipated that the influx of migrants is likely to end in another week or 10 days. “Now, the number of people who are now willing to come back is low. I think in a week or 10 days, the government-sponsored transports to bring them back may not be needed. It is because many who had earlier registered with us are now saying they have got jobs and don’t want to return to the state,” he said.
About their tracking mechanism, Bhokta said, “We are mapping the skills of all those who returned and the districts have been asked to register them at local employment exchanges. Depending on their skill sets, the state government will try to facilitate their placements. We are also devising a system to keep a record of all those who want to migrate back to Jharkhand. A final blueprint will be out in another fortnight.”