Migrant workers must be sent home in 15 days: SC
NEWDELHI: States and Union territories received a time-bound mandate on Tuesday from the Supreme Court to ensure the return of all migrant workers stranded by the post-coronavirus lockdown to their home states within a fortnight and to inform the apex court within the same deadline about welfare programmes, including job opportunities, they plan to offer the returnees.
A three-member bench of the Supreme Court, headed by Justice Ashok Bhushan and comprising justices SK Kaul and MR Shah, is expected to pass directions on the matter on July 8, the next date of hearing.
To mitigate the plight faced by the migrants, the Supreme Court asked states and Union territories to identify migrant workers who have returned at the district and block levels and prepare an inventory of the vocational skills they possess and their employment history.
In addition, they were asked to set up counselling centres to provide the workers information on welfare schemes and employment avenues that are open to them; they will also have to advise workers who want to go back to where they were employed.
Millions of workers and dailywage earners left the big cities and returned to states such as Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha and West Bengal in the aftermath of the lockdown enforced on March 25 to stop the spread of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19).
These directions follow the May 28 order whereby the court took suo moto (Latin for on its own) cognizance of the hardships faced by migrants returning to their villages. After going through the responses of all states/uts on the transport of the migrant workers, the bench of justices Ashok Bhushan, SK Kaul and MR Shah said: “Police officers of states, paramilitary forces wherever deployed are doing a commendable job but some instances of excess with regard to migrant labourers are also there.”