Adhir accuses Mamata of failing to build adequate healthcare facilities

Congress leader in the Lok Sabha Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury accused West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday of failing to build adequate healthcare facilities to tackle COVID-19 during the two months of lockdown and said instead, she was blaming the migrant workers returning to the state for the transmission of the disease. The migrant workers returning to their homes are not "corona demons", as was being projected by her, and she was speaking negatively against them, Chowdhury said in a salvo against the Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo.

He also asked Banerjee to keep in mind that the coronavirus transmission in Bengal did not start from the migrant labourers returning to the state. "Why could you not build adequate permanent and temporary healthcare facilities during the lockdown period to treat COVID-19 cases? You did little and now you are shifting the blame for coronavirus transmission on the migrant labourers. People hailing from the state and stuck outside due to the lockdown cannot be projected as corona demons," Chowdhury said.

"The migrant labourers are returning to their home state to meet their families and they cannot be denied the right," he added. The Congress leader iterated that Banerjee's "reluctance" to facilitate the return of migrant labourers caused them to come back in thousands of hired buses, trucks and small vehicles without any checks, posing a more serious threat of the outbreak.

"I had earlier urged you to do whatever was needed for bringing back the thousands of migrant labourers as well as the stranded tourists and students from Bengal in trains in phases. But you remained unresponsive. Had you agreed to this proposal, there would have been proper medical checking of every person returning," he said. Urging people to follow the lockdown norms, Chowdhury said, "Please do not commit the blunder of not following the restrictions. Such a step will invite danger for you and your family." Banerjee sought Prime Minister Narendra Modi's intervention on Wednesday in the alleged "whimsical" functioning of the railways in sending Shramik Special trains to West Bengal.

The state's infrastructure is "stretched to its limit" after the May 20 cyclone and it can receive very few trains carrying migrant workers back on a daily basis as of now, she said. The state considers the ferrying of a large number of migrant workers by the railways as a big problem for public health. The pressure should be "optimal and well managed", the chief minister added.