UP govt arranges for 1,000 buses to ferry stranded labourers

The Uttar Pradesh government has arranged for 1,000 buses to ferry migrant labourers who are stranded on the border districts owing to a countrywide lockdown. Officials of the Transport Department, bus drivers and conductors were contacted on Friday night to help the people who were stranded in Noida, Ghaziabad, Bulandshahar and Aligarh, among other places,.

Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has also directed officials to arrange for food and water for such people and their families.

On Saturday morning, senior police officers reached the Charbagh bus station in Lucknow to ensure that those arriving there were provided with food and water.

The buses later left for Kanpur, Ballia, Varanasi, Gorakhpur, Azamgarh, Faizabad, Basti, Pratapgarh, Sultanpur, Amethi, Rae Bareli, Gonda, Etawah, Bahraich and Shravasti.

State’s DGP Hitesh Chandra Awasthi and Lucknow Police Commissioner Sujit Kumar Pande were personally present at the bus station to monitor the arrangements, the spokesman added.

The 21-day lockdown imposed from Tuesday midnight in a bid to halt the spread of coronavirus has triggered a mass exodus of migrant workers from cities in several states to their villages.

Meanwhile, five more people tested positive for coronavirus -- three in Noida and two in Dadri -- on Saturday, taking the tally of COVID-10 cases in Uttar Pradesh's Gautam Buddh Nagar to 22.

Two of the new-found cases are from Accheja village in Dadri, while one each has been detected in Noida's Sector 37, 44 and 128, according to a statement from District Magistrate BN Singh.

The village in Dadri and the sectors concerned in Noida are being temporarily sealed for a period of 48 hours so that sanitisation work could be carried out there.

The UP government had on Friday evening put the total number of cases in the state at 50, including 18 in Gautam Buddh Nagar, even as the Health Department officials here had said that the total cases were 17.

One person had tested positive at a private laboratory on Friday whose sample was re-sent for assessment of COVID-19, official sources had said.

The number of COVID-19 cases climbed to 873 in India on Saturday with the death toll rising to 19, according to the Union Health Ministry.

(with inputs from PTI)