Ahmedabad: Total more than 85 Shramik special trains, carrying over 1,00,000 migrant workers are sent to their native states, from Gujarat till Thursday, the highest in the country with It’s a massive effort since 1st May, followed by, Rajasthan, Andhra- Telangana and Maharashtra, though Maharashtra has much more number of cases and migrants and train station.

On Saturday, the state government appointed Labour and Employment, ACS Vipul Mittra IAS as a Nodal officer to facilitate smooth movement of migrant workers, pilgrims, tourists, students and other stranded persons by special trains for better coordination between states.

Additional chief secretary Vipul Mittra said, “Under directions of CM all collectors have been asked to maximize efforts to facilitate the movement of labour in a systematic manner. We started running these Special Shramik Express trains from in coordination with the host states and the Railways. with regular follow up for approvals from host states and train schedules. We are so far run 85 such trains and sent back more than 1 lakh migrant workers to their native states.”

Earlier this week, he asked all district collectors to prepare advance plans for the movement of workers, so that the logistical arrangements are in place before the arrival of the workers. He also said that the trains are being run only after the approval of the receiving states.

“We are working closely with the Railways and the receiving states for scaling up the number of trains being operated from Gujarat. We are continuously increasing number of special trains send to migrants’ native states. Today on Thursday we are planning more than 34 trains from Ahmedabad, Surat, Vadodara, Rajkot, Katch, Bharuch to Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Odisha and Bihar.” Mittra added.

“We have also deployed more than 20 government labour officers at major railway stations and Shramik Express trains related work to facilitate the movement of workers and coordination between district collectorate office and migrants. The flow of migrant workers has been very systematic and we are working to further streamline the process,” said Mittra.

Mittra asked district collectors and nodal officers to prepare a plan for the movement of workers for the next seven days with the advance list and to ramp up to 50 trains a day.