Centre should ensure free travel for migrant workers: TMC

The Trinamool Congress Monday joined the opposition chorus in criticising the Centre for charging money from migrant labourers to ferry them home in trains, and said the government should ensure their hassle-free return to their native places.

"The labourers should be brought back home for free. Why is the railway ministry charging them? The union government and railways is not doing any favour to the migrants. It is the duty of the Central government to ensure safe and free travel of the migrant workers to their homes," former railway minister and senior TMC leader Dinesh Trivedi said during a virtual press meet here.

"If they can provide relief to business houses, then why not to the poor migrant labourers, they are suffering due to sudden announcement of the lockdown by the centre," he said.

Echoing Trivedi, his TMC colleague and leader of the party in the Rajya Sabha, Derek O'Brien, said the railways asking the state to collect money is a classic example of uncooperative federalism.

"Never forget, this is a government which announced a 21-day lockdown with four hours notice. Read the Railway guidelines. They clearly say that the sending state has to collect the money. So, basically it means to collect the money from the migrant workers. Sad. This is a classic example of uncooperative federalism," he tweeted.

The Centre has a simple theory; when things are good, the union government takes credit, when things get tough, it passes the burden to states, O'Brien claimed.

Referring to the central government's decision to send health teams to places with high COVID-19 cases, O'Brien said the fact that only one team has been sent to Bengal proves that the situation here is far better than other states.

"One central health team has been sent to Bengal, and two to other states. It proves that the situation in Bengal is better than other states... We hope that BJP will now shut down its fake news factory aimed at spreading canards against Bengal," he said.

Reacting to O'Brien's comments, West Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh said the state has a history of not cooperating with central teams.

"We have seen how the Mamata Banerjee government did not cooperate with the Inter-Ministerial Central Teams (IMCT) visiting the state. That may be the reason only one team was sent," Ghosh said.

Meanwhile, speaking on the continuing war of words between the chief minister and Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar over the state's handling of the pandemic, TMC MP Sudip Bandopadhyay said people are well aware of "what the Raj Bhawan is doing".

"People of Bengal are politically aware, they can see what the Raj Bhawan is doing... How would it have been if the president wrote to the prime minister every day?"