The Bharatiya Janata Party has criticised the Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy government accusing it of failing in handling the migrant labourers’ issue in Andhra Pradesh and asked it to send funds to the grassroots level from the ‘labour cess’ so that welfare of the migrants can be taken care of.
Party State vice-president S. Vishnuvardhan Reddy, expressing shock at the Anantapur - Ongole migrant labourers’ transport fiasco on Sunday night and the waste of public money in bringing them back to Anantapur on Monday, alleged that the district administration had thrown the Central government directives to the wind.
Mr. Reddy said thousands of migrant labourers were walking on the National Highway to reach far-off places such as Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh, which showed the State government was not taking care of them and washed its hands off by just creating a Spandana website for them to register. “It is foolish to expect those non-literates to register themselves on the website,” he said and asked the district administration to immediately stop the flow of migrants and quarantine them and send them by Shramik trains.
HRF charge
Meanwhile, Human Rights Forum district president A. Chadnrasekhar has held the Anantapur district administration totally responsible for the thousands of migrant labourers walking on the NH-44, and warned it against playing with the lives of the poor people. A Shramik train heading towards Odisha getting stranded on Anantapur railway platform for several hours, was a human rights violation, he claimed.
