The South Central Railway (SCR) has till now run 196 Shramik Special trains transporting over 2.40 lakh migrant workers to their destinations with the last one lakh passengers transported in the past week. While 128 services were run from Telangana to transport 1.56 lakh passengers, 53 trains ran from Andhra Pradesh to carry over 66,000 passengers and 15 trains from Maharashtra with around 20,000 passengers.
In fact, a record 43 Shramik Special trains were run within a span of 12 hours from various railway stations between 4 p.m. on Saturday and the early hours of Sunday. Forty (40) of these Shramik Special trains were run from Secunderabad, Hyderabad, Kacheguda, Ghatkesar, Lingampally, Mahabubnagar and Kazipet stations.
Ten trains moved towards Bihar, six to Jharkhand, eight to Uttar Pradesh, 12 to Odisha and four to other states. Three other Shramik Special trains commenced journey with migrant workers from Nambur, and Kadapa stations in A.P. and Aurangabad station in Maharashtra with around 40,000 workers availing the facility.
Extensive arrangements were made at the railway stations from where the migrant special trains originated, said General Manager Gajanan Mallya, who has been personally monitoring the operations in close co-ordination with the principal head of departments at the headquarters and Divisional Railway Managers (DRMs).
While state government authorities handled the registration, identification and booking of passenger trains, Railways has drawn a comprehensive plan to ensure that the train operations are efficiently deployed to provide a hassle-free travel to passengers with precision scheduling and sanitisation of railway stations and trains.
Food, water etc. were provided to passengers in coordination with state governments. Norms associated with social distancing, wearing of masks etc., were adhered to by the Railway personnel, he said.
The highest number of trains from May 1, when the inaugural migrant train started, were to Bihar with 59 carrying 79,530 passengers followed by 48 trains towards Uttar Pradesh with 57,417 passengers and 24 trains towards Jharkhand with 26,782 passengers. One train each moved towards Jammu and Kashmir, Manipur and Tripura, carrying 3,000 passengers altogther, said chief PRO Ch. Rakesh.
