The special train transporting 1,141 students and others from Chennai will arrive at Manipur’s Jiribam railway station around midnight on Tuesday. Fifty buses had already reached the railway station to bring them to Imphal. They will be screened for COVID-19 by the doctors and paramedics camping at the station.
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Officials said that students, employees and others, including the cancer patients who went for treatment to several States, will be brought back to Manipur. Quarantine centres have been opened for lodging the returnees in their respective districts. A train from Punjab and nearby towns is set to bring back Manipuris on May 13. Likewise, Manipuris stranded in Karnataka, Gujarat, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu will be transported back home till May 20.
Chief secretary of Manipur J. Suresh Babu said that family members of the passengers would not be able to meet the passengers at the station or the quarantine centres.
Interactive map of confirmed coronavirus cases in India
Meanwhile, complaints are growing from some quarantine centres that the food supplied to the inmates is not sufficient. Besides most of the centres have no drinking water or facilities for washing hands. Some inmates of a centre at Sainik school at Pangei in Imphal east district said that there were just two toilets and washrooms for 150 persons who were lodged there on arrival by buses from Guwahati, Assam.
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One inmate said that there was no proper drain or sewage system with the result that the dirty water was clogged. “In fact, this quarantine centre may soon become the breeding ground for other dangerous diseases,” an inmate said.
