Special train with migrant workers to leave for Jharkhand from Kerala

A special train carrying 1,200 stranded migrants will depart from Kerala to Jharkhand. This is the second train which would be leaving from the state with the workers following the MHA guidelines on inter-state movement of stranded workers.

Thiruvananthapuram: A train carrying around 1,200 stranded migrant workers from Kerala would leave from the state capital to Hatia in Jharkhand on Saturday.

Thiruvananthapuram District Collector K Gopalakrishnan said the train was expected to leave the central station here at around 2 PM. Those with any symptoms of the virus would not be allowed to travel, he told reporters here.

This is the second train which would be leaving from the state with the workers. Around 1,100 migrant workers from Aluva in Kochi left for Bhubaneswar in Odisha on Friday night.

In a first since the lockdown began, the Railways had run a special non-stop train to ferry 1,200 stranded migrants from Hyderabad's Lingampally to Hatia in Jharkhand.

Earlier, the state government in Kerala had said that at least five trains would be leaving for various places from Kerala on Saturday with the workers.

The railways have suspended the passenger, mail and express train services in a bid to combat the spread of COVID-19.

Earlier on April 29, the Ministry of Home Affairs had issued a fresh set of guidelines to let migrant workers, students, tourists and pilgrims stranded in different parts of the country to get back home.

(PTI report)