TURA: Close to 400 migrant workers from the Garo Hills region who had been stranded in Jaintia and Khasi Hills for over a month and a half in their work places due to the COVID-19 lockdown finally returned home on Monday.
The state government arranged a special convoy of buses from Shillong to ferry the passengers from the region back to Garo Hills through the Shillong-Nongstoin-Tura highway.
While the first batch of the migrant workers arrived on Sunday morning, another group arrived in five buses belonging to the state Shillong Public Transport Service (SPTS) and NEHU on Monday.
) The migrants were first taken to the Inter-state Bus Terminus (ISBT) at Chasingre, 8 kms from Tura, where medical teams undertook a medical screening of the arrivals before putting them in vehicles destined to take them back home.
“The arrivals were from Jaintia and Khasi Hills who had been working there but got stranded due to the lockdown. They were already under quarantine over there but as per health guidelines they will have to be in self quarantine when they reach their homes,” informed West Garo Hills Deputy Commissioner Ram Singh.
According to Singh, workers from Garo Hills who are stranded in Assam are being brought in from Tuesday onwards. “Most of these migrants are based in districts like Tinsukia and Sonitpur and they will also be screened and sent into home quarantine,” said the deputy commissioner.
The district chief also clarified that the movement of stranded migrant workers and students is currently only for the north east region as the state and central government is working on the modalities to prepare the return of those from the region stuck in other parts of the country, barring the north east.
Low registration turnout
Meanwhile, only 1875 persons from the West Garo Hills region who are stranded in other parts of the country have registered their names with the government portal while another 750 who are also stranded in other north eastern states have registered thereby displaying the low number of registrations. Some of the stranded students say that the difficulty is in getting access to the portal and receiving a confirmation of their registration.
West Garo Hills alone has several thousand students studying in the metros and a similar number engaged in the big cities.