Kerala floods: As a part of a special evacuation plan, the Centre has undertaken a rescue operation for migrant labourers who were stuck in flood-affected Kerala. These workers were transported back to their home states by trains over the weekend. Indian Railways train services took around 25,000 labourers back to their home states, according to an IE report. On Monday, in order to take stranded labourers to three eastern Indian states, 6 special trains were pressed into service. Also, 48 special train services were being operated over the past two days to Chennai as well as other cities from where train services to other parts of the country are normal. The 23 coaches of the trains, which were mostly unreserved class to accommodate more people, took migrants to Bhubaneshwar in Odisha, Santragachi in West Bengal and Silchar in Assam.
According to the officials on the ground in Thiruvananthapuram and Kochi, the Ernakulam Junction railway station was full of migrants from Odisha, Assam, West Bengal and the Northeast. DRM of Trivandrum Division of Southern Railway, S K Sinha was quoted in the report saying that the migrant labourers wanted to go back to their homes as they said their workplaces and living quarters were all flooded. He further stated that so far, the railways have managed to transport around 25,000 labourers back to their home states.
There are more than 2.5 million migrant labourers in Kerala, coming from other states and even Bangladesh and Nepal, according to official estimates. According to the officials, many of the migrant labourers approached the local railway offices saying they were told to leave by their employers as there was no support system to sustain them. In order to get their residents back, the governments of Odisha and West Bengal reached out to Indian Railways.
According to Southern Railway General Manager R K Kulshreshta, more special train services will be introduced to send migrants back. He said the previous strategy was to get the migrants to Chennai first. So trains ran from Ernakulum and Trivandrum to Chennai from where they could continue their journey. However, now that the states have made specific requests, the railways is running those trains, he added.