Trinamul Congress Rajya Sabha MP Derek O’Brien and its Lok Sabha MPs Sudip Bandopadhyay and Dr Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar today slammed the Centre for imposing an unplanned lockdown which led to misery for lakhs of migrant workers.

During a virtual press conference Mr Bandopadhyay said that there was lack of coordination between the states and the Centre to bring back the migrants to their native places.

“There was lack of imagination, farsightedness and absence of managerial skills on the part of the Centre where migrant labourers were concerned,” he said. “We came to know about these lakhs of labourers when they came out on railway stations and bus stops in Mumbai and Delhi after the lockdown was announced suddenly and thus social distancing took a back seat,” Mr Bandopadhyay said.

Mr Bandopadhyay said that West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee wrote to eighteen chief ministers of other states on 26th March requesting them to take care of migrant labourers from our state and set up 711 relief camps in the state for migrant labourers of other states.

“It is a shame that at the time of a pandemic the Centre is charging train fare from the migrant workers,” he added. He also accused the Centre of lacking proper plan to transport the migrant labourers to their native places from their place of work.

Mr Derek O’Brien said that all these things happened because the 21 days lockdown was announced with only 4 hours notice. He said that on 4th March the Centre proudly declared in the Parliament that they were bringing back Indians from China, Iran, Italy and in some cases even paid their airfares, but for the migrant labourers the Centre did nothing.

Our research wing interviewed 11,000 migrant workers and 90 per cent of them stated that they did not receive any money or ration from the Centre, he said. Mr O’Brien also showed a train ticket where the migrant labourer had to pay Rs 715 as train fare and also pointed out that another Rs 300 was spent for bus fare for travelling to the station.

Mr O’Brien said, ” I want to ask Mr Modi, Mr Shah and Mr Piyush Goyal that when the Railways was forced to pay about 150 crores to PM CARES Fund then why is the Centre charging the migrant labourers and asking the state governments to pay 15 per cent of the total cost?”

Dr Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar slammed the Centre for lack of proper coordination between the state and the Centre for transportation of the migrant labourers. She also asked why the Centre had sent faulty test kits to West Bengal which delayed the testing process.

She said that the doctors require PPE and not showering of petals and money should be diverted for buying PPE and other kits.