TN plans to send back 10,000 migrants per day: CM

Tamil Nadu plans to send 10,000 migrant workers a day to their home states and has requested them to stay at the camps till arrangements are made.

Action was being taken in consultation with other states to send back around 10,000 migrant workers daily from Tamil Nadu, said Chief Minister K. Palaniswami, here on Saturday.

According to him, 55,473 migrant workers have been returned to different states, like Bihar, Odisha, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal, in 43 trains between May 6 and May 15.

Palaniswami said the TN government was bearing the entire expenditure -- train and food -- and requested the migrant workers not to try to return their home states on foot and by other means.

"With their employers neglecting them and not paying wages and transport shutdown, the workers are left with no other option," R. Geetha, Additional Secretary, the Nirman Mazdoor Panchayat Mazdoor Sangam, told IANS.

She said the workers were staying in tin sheds and in summer it was horrible to stay there.

Geetha said the state government had provided 15 kg rice, 1 kg oil and pulses. But they had no money to buy vegetables, she added.

"After reaching the point of no return, they started to return to their home states," she added.