Will Help Migrant Workers To Reach Homes: Congress

TPCC president N Uttam Kumar Reddy today said that the party would help the migrant workers stranded in the state as per the call given by Congress national president Sonia Gandhi, and ensure that the workers reached their native places safely.

He said that the party would bear the complete travelling expenses of the migrant workers.

He said that the Congress had taken up the responsibility as the state and central governments had failed to do so.

Citing that the CM and the PM were collecting huge amounts for their respective relief funds, he said that it was unfortunate that they were still collecting money from the migrant workers to ferry them to their native villages.

Reddy made these remarks while addressing a gathering at the day-long Satyagraha Deeksha protest program of the party leaders.

Reddy, along with other senior leaders, staged the protest at Gandhi Bhavan to highlight the "shortcomings" in the procurement of agriculture produce, and the migrant workers' welfare.

Malkajgiri MP A Revanth Reddy, TPCC Working President Ponnam Prabhakar, MLA Jagga Reddy, ex-CLP leader K Jana Reddy, ex-PCC President V Hanumantha Rao, TPCC Covid-19 Task Force Committee chairman Marri Shashidhar Reddy, Hyderabad City Congress president M Anjan Kumar Yadav and other senior leaders also participated in the dharna.

Speaking on the occasion, Reddy said that the party had organised the protest program as the state government had failed to prevent the spread of the coronavirus and to solve the problems faced by the farmers of the state.

He said that it was shameful that the state government didn't even have statistics of the total number of migrant workers, and asked it what kind of financial assistance it would extend to them without even having their figures.

He demanded that the state government provide all necessary facilities to the migrant workers, and warned that the construction sector would collapse in the absence of the migrant workers.

Reddy also reiterated the Congress' demand for increasing the number of coronavirus tests in Telangana. He claimed Telangana was conducting the least number of tests to trace Covid-19 patients. He said that neither were the state laboratories being fully utilised nor were the private labs approved by ICMR being permitted to conduct the tests.

He repeated that the decision to not conduct coronavirus tests on dead bodies to ascertain the cause of death was highly puzzling and led to suspicion that the state government was trying to hush up the real figures on coronavirus infections and deaths in the state.