100th ‘shramik special’ departs from Ludhiana

Our Correspondent

Ludhiana, May 21

With 100th “shramik special” train departing from Ludhiana railway station for Hardoi in Uttar Pradesh late last night, a total of 101 such trains have been run from the industrial hub which ferried around 1.20 lakh migrants back to their native places in different states till May 20. The100th “shramik special” train – after the first such train for migrants since May 5, was flagged off by Deputy Commissioner Pradeep Agrawal, Commissioner of Police Rakesh Agrawal and Municipal Commissioner Kanwalpreet Brar.

Giving this information here today, senior officials of Ferozepur Division of Northern Railway said at the same time, this division had achieved the distinction of being on the top in the entire country to have run 75 per cent of “shramik special” trains on the scheduled time.

The Ferozepur Division had run 198 “shramik special” trains for transportation of migrant workers till May 20, including 101 from Ludhiana, 63 from Jalandhar, 22 from Amritsar, eight from Ferozepur Cantt, three from Shri Mata Vaishno Devi at Katra and one train from Gurdaspur carrying nearly 2.37 lakh passengers.

“Of these 198 trains, 139 were bound for different destinations in Uttar Pradesh, 43 for Bihar, five each for Jharkahnd and Madhya Pradesh, two for Chhattisgarh and one each for the states of Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Kerala and Maharashtra,” the railway officials added.

The Deputy Commissioner said the Punjab Government was paying for the travel, food, water and pickup service from designated points to the migrants. “Medical screening of all passengers is being carried out meticulously after which they are issued medical certificates by the district administration. The state government is in constant touch with the other states and more trains will be started in coming days so that maximum number of people can be sent back to their home states,” he added.