'Corona better than hunger,' say UP migrant workers

Lucknow: As India continues to grapple with the coronavirus pandemic and flagging economic growth, some of Uttar Pradesh's 30 lakh-plus migrant workers who returned during the lockdown are going back to work.

At the government bus stand in eastern Uttar Pradesh's Deoria, 50 km from the railway junction in Gorakhpur that has trains to Maharashtra, Gujarat and elsewhere, Diwakar Prasad and Khursheed Ansari are both boarding buses for Gorakhpur, according to NDTV report.

Ansari is a factory worker in Mumbai and says his large tailoring unit is still shut and that he returned home just a month ago.

"If there was employment in UP, I would not return.

My company has not started yet but I am returning to find whatever work I can. Corona is better than hunger. It is better for me to die rather than my children to die of coronavirus," Ansari said.

Prasad, a technician in a Kolkata firm, had come home for Holi but got stuck in UP due to the lockdown. His firm has reopened and he says he is returning to Kolkata to help his family of five children and his wife. "I am scared but I am also scared to live here. How will I eat and feed my family?" said Prasad.

Diwakar Prasad , Khursheed Ansari and others in eastern Uttar Pradesh are looking to go back despite the state government promising work in the state itself.

On Saturday, the government claimed an all-time record in the number of people working under MNREGA in Uttar Pradesh and also said employment for 60 lakh people was being generated in small industries.

In Siddharth Nagar, a remote and backward east UP district that has seen the maximum number of returning migrant workers, Mohammed Abid, an AC technician in his late 20s says he is returning to Mumbai because government schemes and promises have not reached him.

"There is good money in Mumbai but I will not be able to manage here (in Uttar Pradesh). Even if schemes are being taken out, they are not reaching us.

It is like being unemployed. There is no work here. You go to anyone and they say there is no work, " Abid said.