JK arranges 20 special buses to evacuate 470 JK migrant workers from Haryana

The Jammu and Kashmir government has arranged 20 buses to evacuate 470 migrant workers of the Union Territory from 12 districts of Haryana amid the COVID-19 lockdown.

The government has arranged the fleet of buses under its Haryana-Migrant Workers Evacuation Plan to get the UT's migrant labourers back home, an official spokesman said.

Meanwhile, the Jammu district administration on Saturday received 3rd COVID-19 special train carrying 952 passengers from outside the UT.

So far, three trains have reached Jammu with a total of 2,870 stranded passengers belonging to different districts of the UT, the spokesman said.

Jammu Deputy Commissioner Sushma Chauhan, who is supervising the whole process of boarding and deboarding of migrants at Jammu Railway station, said 100 per cent sampling of returnees has been done at the kiosks at the station.

Besides, an elaborate transport system has been put in place to take passengers to their native districts for administrative quarantine amid strict adherence to the guidelines, she said.

Additionally, the government has evacuated about 3,178 stranded residents of J&K between May 15 and May 16 morning, taking the total figure to 52,396 migrants, who have returned to the UT through Lakhanpur besides bringing back home 9,243 persons through special trains at Jammu and Udhampur till Saturday.

The spokesman said a train has been scheduled to run from Bengaluru to J&K on May 17 to bring back the J&K people stranded in Karnataka.

A train from Nagpur reached Udhampur railway station with 1,027 passengers, while the 8th train from Bengaluru carrying about 655 stranded J-K natives is expected to reach Udhampur by tonight, the spokesman said.

Udhampur Deputy Commissioner Piyush Singhla said elaborate arrangements are in place for reception and departure of these passengers to their homes in different districts of J&K.

The spokesman said the daily truck arrival carrying industrial raw material and construction material crossed 2,100-mark on Saturday with total 61,651 trucks entering J&K since COVID-19 lockdown, in a clear indication of economic activities gaining impetus in J&K, the spokesman said.