SRINAGAR - In the wake of growing COVID-19 cases in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir, many migrant workers who are stuck in the region are making desperate appeals to the government for food and transportation.
Musharraf Shareef, a worker from the eastern Indian state of Bihar is stuck in Srinagar, the main city of the region, with a group of over seven people who have no food and money, and are fending for themselves. Shareef is among many other migrant workers stuck in the region after a lockdown was announced by the government in the wake of COVID-19 outbreak.
“We earn from our day labor and then eat. When you do not have any means of income due to the lockdown, it is hard to survive in such conditions.
“Before coronavirus, it is the hunger which will kill us,” Shareef told Anadolu Agency.
Although the government in the region on Sunday started a helpline to provide help and assistance to these workers, many of these are still unable to make a call as their phones have become defunct.
“We can’t make a call from our phones now, we have no recharge. Only a small amount of money is left, and if we use it for other purpose than food, we will starve and die,” Muskeen Abbas, another worker told Anadolu Agency. The desperation to survive in the present crisis can be gauged when a group of 25 workers last Friday walked 100 kilometers (62.1 miles) overnight from South Kashmir’s Shopian district to Surankote in the Poonch area of Jammu region.
But after reaching there, the district administration put all of them under the required quarantine to avoid possible contraction or transmission of the virus.
