No Food, Water, or Even Soap: Migrant Workers in Quarantine Desperate to Return Home

Lucknow: After being forced to leave the very cities they built, facing stigma courtesy the police and travelling hundreds of kilometres, migrant workers have been sent to temporary quarantine shelters — where they often end up living in school buildings and panchayat offices where the workers do not have access to food, water or even soap.

According to reports, the workers were made to share buckets, hand washing bars and even beds.

Workers at a shelter in Deoria district claimed that they had only seven beds to be shared among 30 people. In Basti’s Jagdishpur primary school, 30 people were reportedly forced to share a bar of soap. While over in Gorakhpur, the district Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath calls home, inmates were supposed to make do with a single bucket for bathing and for storing drinking water.

In many other centres, the workers were not given any food for days, and those who did get said that it was not enough. Local authorities are struggling to maintain hygienic conditions and ensure the safety of the workers who feel severely crippled due to a lack of funds.

Unsanitary quarantine facilities

As soon as the lockdown was enforced, workers were made to move to makeshift quarantine centres. Instead of ensuring that they remained protected from infection, the centres put them at a greater risk of contracting the virus.

The workers have alleged prevalence of unsanitary conditions, shortage of space and a lack of beds, leading many to be stuffed together inside cramped spaces. All that with no access to water or soap, while defeating the very idea of social distancing and hygiene.

Surendra (named changed) and his son returned to Basti with four others from New Delhi after the lockdown brought their lives to a standstill. They expected clean quarantine facilities in their native village but the camps were “hell”. “There is no fan, not enough toilets – and the ones that exist are often dirty. Beds are crammed together and the only way to shower is with water from a bucket that everyone has to share. There is no soap or a hand sanitiser either,” he said.

He that his life was much easier in Delhi but since they returned to their village and had been quarantined at the primary school, they are being treated like criminals. “You can imagine the apathy of the district administration that they did not give us a bar of soap for 37 people and if we want our family members to give them to us, the cops are not letting it happen," another person under quarantine told NewsClick.

Sheela, an activist based in Gorakhpur, said that the district administration only works when quarantined people post photos and videos of dirty sheets, broken toilets and dirty crowded quarantine centres on social media.

Not a single grain in three days

For those quarantined at primary school — water, sanitation and beds are not the only issue, food is found to be a prime concern.

On Tuesday, the district administration of Shravasti rushed to a primary school in Audhai, nearly 40 kilometres from the district headquarters. It was after they came to know that three people in a shelter had not eaten a single meal in three days; 100 others had not been given enough food by the concerned authorities. The village pradhan (village head) was later booked and sent to jail.

Yashu Rustagi, District Magistrate (DM) of Shravasti told NewsClick that the incident in Audahi happened where a college has been turned into makeshift quarantine centre for people from other states. “Despite us having enough ration kits and food, the village pradhan was not provided them with food and water. The pradhan was booked under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and sent to jail immediately,” she said.

When asked about situation at the moment, she said that panchayat functionaries have been appointed as nodal authorities for such quarantine shelters. They have also been allocated funds for the same.

No funds for gram pradhans

The situation for gram pradhans is not easy either, as there was no blueprint which said that primary schools and panchayat offices would be turned into quarantine centres. Neither did the administration make any food arrangements for those under quarantine, nor has the government released any funds for the same.

A principal living in Lakhimpur Kheri district, where a Dalit youth committed suicide in quarantine after being beaten up by police, told NewsClick: "When the Prime Minister announced a lockdown and jobless migrant workers started coming back to their native village, the government could have made a roadmap for shelter and decided who would bear the expenses. But, the government had not made any arrangements before time. Aside from this, I’ve not got a single penny from the government and what I did in my village was from my own pocket,” he said.