Govt cancels passenger trains, crisis looms at Central station

100s Of Migrants Stranded Without Food And Water

L R Shankar & V Ayyappan TNN

Chennai:23.03.2020

Hundreds of passengers, most of them labourers from other states, are stranded at MGR Central railway station struggling for food and water after the Centre decided to suspend all passenger train services across the country till March 31. 

They thronged the station premises, starving in the morning but queuing up for hours to get food packets brought by volunteers and water by Metrowater authorities at noon. They didn’t care about social distancing. All they wanted was food and water and a train to go home.

The authorities should have seen this coming when they cancelled trains.

Railway Protection Force (RPF) personnel wielding lathis tried to chase them away, announcing over a megaphone that there will be no trains for a week. However, the irate crowd stayed put, shouting “Chalo Bihar, Chalo Bihar”. Totally outnumbered, the RPF personnel allowed the people to settle down in different parts of the station campus. A few hundreds would have left if railways had operated a special train which they had announced to Santragachi for Saturday night.

ENDLESS WAIT: Hundreds of workers are stuck as train services stand cancelled till March 31

Cancellation of trains comes as a surprise for many

But, a rethink on the part of the officials that they would be encouraging more people to travel in crowded coaches made them cancel the service. “The special train was cancelled because it is risky for people to travel because of the spread of the virus,” said an official. However, the total cancellation of trains has now stumped them.

Ram Kumar, a load worker, said he needed to return to his village in Bihar. “There is no work here. I have come to the station from Chengalpet with my family. We all came here a day earlier. We have confirmed tickets. But they now say trains are not there. There is no way for us to go back. Staying back is difficult as there is no work.” The workers have been flooding the station in the last two days.

Many said they did not know about the janata curfew and train cancellations. And they were not ready to believe that there would be no trains on Monday. “We will wait and see,” said a worker.

Ashish Kumar, who was at the station on Friday, said that for many of them returning to their worksite may not be an option. “No point in going all the way back because I have told them that I will not be returning for a few months. So if there are no trains, people will have to stay here till trains resume.”

Those who had confirmed tickets bought from the counter cannot cancel the tickets and get the money back because railways have also closed reservation counters till March 31.

A senior railway official said that “We have moved them out of the station building to prevent them crowding there. That defeats the purpose of cancelling the trains. Now, it is the responsibility of the state government to move them to a safe area or a shelter.”

The mass of people who used to work at restaurants, small eateries, paan shops, ice cream shops, small firms, industrial units in the city and its suburbs have suffered the most because of small businesses either cutting down staff or closing.

With a lockdown on the cards from Monday, they now have nowhere to go but to sleep on the pavements near central station waiting for trains to resume.