Delhi High Court on Monday warned a re-run of the migrant crisis after the imposition of fresh six-day lockdown in the national capital in the wake of second wave of COVID-19.
Centre, state failed in migrant workers crisis in Covid-19 lockdown: High Court
Delhi High Court on Monday warned a re-run of the migrant crisis after the imposition of fresh six-day lockdown in the national capital in the wake of second wave of COVID-19.
The high court said during the 2020 lockdown, both the Centre and the AAP government did not see the migrant crisis coming and lessons are required to be learnt from it.
The high court said there are reports that migrant workers have again started to go back home after the announcement of the six-day lockdown.
“We would like that lessons are taken from the past lockdown. The thing in which the government failed miserably was daily wagers,” it said.
“With the imposition of curfew, the daily wagers are again faced with a grim reality. On the last occasion, the civil society had come forward,” a bench of Justices Vipin Sanghi and Rekha Palli said.
“Both the state and central governments have miserably failed,” said the bench and added, “You left it to the good Samaritans to come out of their houses and distribute food to the migrant labourers.”
The bench said it was saying this from its own experience that the state has failed to utilise thousands of rupees lying in the corpus under the Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Cess Act.
“We direct the Delhi government to withdraw from the said account, if necessary, and provide food to needy daily wagers at their respective work sites,” the bench said.
It added that the Delhi government shall utilise the services of contractors who used to prepare mid-day meals in schools which are closed now.
The Delhi chief secretary was directed by the court to ensure implementation of its direction without any delay and the Delhi government has to mention in its affidavit as to how it proposed to implement it.
PM meet with doctors
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday called the vaccine as the biggest weapon in the fight against Covid-19 and urged doctors to encourage more and more patients to get the jab.
In a virtual interaction with the country's leading doctors on the pandemic situation and vaccination progress, he also noted that Covid-19 is spreading rapidly in tier-2 and tier-3 cities this time, and asked them to connect with their colleagues working there and give them online consultations to ensure that all protocols are followed correctly.