Shillong: Reports that around 400 returnees from different parts of the North East and the country who have now entered Meghalaya have violated quarantine protocols has elicited angry responses from a people paranoid about the invisible yet potent COVID-19 virus.
On Friday about 1,100 people from Meghalaya working and studying in Chennai arrived by train at Guwahati. They are on their way to respective districts. Tired from the long journey, disillusioned about their future and dying to reach home, one of them who did not wish to be quoted said, “It is like coming out of a hell hole. Although delayed we are so happy to be home.”
On Friday another train from Vadodara in Gujarat with 217 passengers comprising students and migrant labour from Meghalaya left for Guwahati at 4 pm. But this journey is not without its share of agonies. On Thursday morning, Sanjoy Hazarika, Director, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, based in Delhi, received a message from one of his relatives in Ahmedabad that 12 people from Meghalaya are stranded there but had been refused entry pass for the last train to Guwahati.
Hazarika got the details of the stranded Meghalayans and passed the message on to the Chief Minister’s office. He also sent a message to Sampath Kumar, Commissioner & Secretary Health, Government of Meghalaya. Kumar immediately attended to the problem and within an hour managed to get seats for those stranded travellers.
The 12 stranded at Ahmedabad said, they lost their jobs and had not eaten properly for days. Hazarika who is also a resident of Shillong said he is happy to have been able to help those in distress but also emphasized that the Meghalaya Government was swift in its response. Meanwhile the one sentence exchanged by Shillongites since Thursday is, “What will happen now that ‘people’ are coming back in droves? What if they carry the virus with them as has happened in Assam?” Some have used crude language against those that have chosen to be “home quarantined,” saying they will not observe quarantine protocols and will be the reason for the spread of the virus.
The paranoia is palpable; so is the thinly veiled stigmatisation. People feel that the respective Dorbar Shnong now have to rise to the occasion and activate the committees formed to tackle the pandemic. An elderly resident of a particular locality said, “This is the time when the Dorbar Shnong must assert itself and be strict with those who are home quarantined. He pointed to Manipur where bamboo huts were quickly erected by the villagers to cater to all returnees so that they are quarantined away from home.”
This is a wait and watch period for Meghalaya even as more stranded students and workers arrive from Gujarat on Sunday.
