Migrants see red over delay in travel arrangements in Ongole

Ongole: Thousands of migrants who used to work at the granite industries in the Prakasam district are mounting pressure on the administration to arrange transport to their states or allow them to go even on foot.

There are about 12,000 migrant people from Rajasthan, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, and other states working in the granite quarries and processing units at Chimakurthy, Martur and their surrounding villages.

During the lockdown, the companies they are working in are alleged to be neglecting the wellbeing of the migrants who lack enough resources to survive as there is no work and savings with them.

The hopes of the workers to go home were dashed when the government extended the lockdown from May 4 again.

Since then, the migrants have been making rounds to local tahsildar office here demanding the officials to send them home.

Unhappy over the delay in the process and suspecting that the government is deliberately disallowing them from leaving to ensure manpower for local companies, the workers have been staging protests on roads for hours daily for the last few days.

The district administration reassured them to send home, but only after conducting tests. Officials conducted tests for nearly 7,000 people on Thursday and Friday. But on Saturday again, the workers came onto roads, this time with their luggage, determined to walk home.

Accusing the government of cheating them, they said they were going home on foot. Police officials, including DSP K V V N V Prasad and other CIs and SIs, have been keeping the situation under control for the past one week following the orders from the higher authorities even braving stone-pelting by the desperate migrants.

Ongole rural CI P Subba Rao said that workers were in frustration and not in a mood to believe the officials.

He said that the government has already convinced the Odisha government and they were expecting that the transport arrangements for the workers would be done by the Odisha government in a day or two so that the others would believe them.

He said that the police understand their state of mind on humanitarian grounds and were sensitive to the plight of workers.