Amid rising coronavirus cases, Bengal migrant workers get back to work in other states with Covid-free certificates

Even as the coronavirus cases are increasing, the workers are getting back to their workplaces, as the businesses across the country resumed work after the country relaxed lockdown as part of unlock.1.

Murshidabad is the biggest contributor of migrant workforce from West Bengal. So far about 10,000 of the 3 lakh workers, who had returned back to the state, have procured the certificates, an HT report said.

People in different blocks of Murshidabad district are thronging the government health centres to get documents certifying them free of covid-19 infection to return to the very states they had left in Shramik Special trains and by other means.

However, several coronavirus cases have been reported among the migrants which has led to the recent spurt.

“Till Monday, 126 people in Murshidabad had tested positive for Covid-19 and more than 95% are migrant labourers. Had they not returned to their villages the virus might not have spread to remote areas so fast,” a senior district health department official, on condition of anonymity, told HT.

“Now that they have started returning to the states where they worked earlier, the disease is likely to spread as most of the carriers can be asymptomatic,” the health official added.

The BJP state leadership has alleged that the ruling Trinamool Congress government of West Bengal wanted to stop the passage of the migrant labourers as it would expose the lack of job opportunities in the state.