Help starts arriving for migrant workers in TN

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Madurai/Coimbatore/Trichy:30.03.2020

The lockdown has left thousands of migrant labourers from other states stranded in Tamil Nadu and vice versa. While some are getting help from their employers, local authorities and philanthropists for survival the rest are getting help after staging protests or highlighting their plight on social media.

Around 1,500 to 2,000 migrant workers from Tamil Nadu who are stranded in Kochi have got help from the police and resident associations in the city. These migrant labourers are among the nearly 12,000 migrant labourers from Bihar, West Bengal, Odisha and Assam who are jobless due to the lockdown and are stuck without food and money and unable to return to their home towns.

Over 50 migrant labourers of Vaisali in Bihar stranded at KVR Nagar in Karuvampalayam, Tirupur, got food following the intervention of chief minister Edappadi K Palaniswami. Former Bihar health minister Tej Pratap Yadav raised the issue on twitter, tagging the CM, who instructed Tirupur collector K Vijayakarthikeyan to do the needful at the earliest.

Hundred-and-thirty migrant labourers working at an export firm in Coimbatore district gathered in front of the company on Sunday and staged a protest. They complained that their employer provided them variety rice thrice a day and demanded meals and roti, instead.

Twenty-four youths working in a tool manufacturing company in Pandharpur town, Solapur district, Maharashtra are stranded in three rooms at their workplace. They sought intervention of the Tamil Nadu government to relocate them to a safer shelter. Talking to TOI over phone they said that they are staying in three congested rooms and fear contracting Covid-19 as it is impossible to practise social distancing.

Police pacify protesting migrant workers stranded in Coimbatore

Govt must help migrants: PMK

Chennai:

PMK leader S Ramadoss on Sunday urged the Centre and state governments to look into the welfare of the migrant labourers, who were stranded following the lockdown. “Nearly 150 fishermen from Rishivandiyam constituency had gone to Goa for their livelihood. They were struggling after the lockdown was enforced. Similarly, 400 people from TN were stranded in Kannur and Kasaragod in Kerala following the clampdown. The government should help them,” Ramadoss said. TNN