Rescue trains coming for 3.6m stranded Indian workers

India will organize special trains to get at least 3.6 million migrant workers stranded by the pandemic lockdown back home, authorities said Saturday as fresh coronavirus cases in the country hit a new daily high.

With fears rising over the spread of the COVID-19 disease in Mumbai and other major cities, the government said 2,600 special trains would run over the next 10 days to help the workers who lost jobs when the lockdown started two months ago.

Millions of migrant workers have been stranded in the densely populated cities and many have walked hundreds of kilometers to get home.

Scores have died in accidents and even from exhaustion and hunger in the struggle to reach their villages.

Vinod Kumar Yadav, chairman of the Indian Railway Board, said about 80 percent of the new “Shamrik,” or laborer, trains would go to Bihar and Uttar Pradesh states, the biggest source of domestic migrant workers.

About four million have already been moved on the special trains.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is gradually easing the world’s biggest virus lockdown, which has caused mass unemployment among India’s 1.3 billion population.

But at the same time, the number of new cases is rising each day, with at least 6,600 reported Saturday.

Experts say the outbreak will not peak in India until June or July and authorities face an increasing struggle to contain the pandemic in Mumbai, New Delhi and other cities that account for the bulk of cases.