Delhi: Uncertainty after message of hope brings them to schools

NEW DELHI: Hope is a dangerous thing. And that is exactly what rose in migrant workers after they got an SMS asking them to turn up at the government school in East Vinod Nagar in east Delhi from where they would be taken to the railway station to board a train to their native places.

However, sitting in the scorching heat, all they had been staring at was uncertainly.

“We will sleep on the footpath till our turn comes. What is the point of registering online when we get messages but aren’t sent home?” asked one of the migrants . Chaos was prevalent outside the school as several buses were parked haphazardly leading to a traffic mess.

Murli Dhar Sharma was seen struggling to make his two-and-a-half-year-old son wear a mask. He had run out of money as he wasn’t paid his salary. He had reached the school with the hope of being sent to Amethi, Uttar Pradesh.

“I managed to register online with the help of a friend. I got the message last night. We locked our house and paid an auto driver Rs 1,000 to drop us at Anand Vihar. I have been asked to wait since then,” said Sharma, who lived in Rampura near Punjabi Bagh.

While he was waiting, other migrants started to board around 50 buses so that they could catch a train to Basti in UP. Senior officials and civil defence volunteers faced difficulty in controlling them.

A similar scenario existed outside the government school in West Vinod Nagar where migrants from Bihar were seen sitting on the footpath. When TOI visited the school, it was being cleaned as hundreds of migrants had left for the railway station some time ago. Some labourers said they were provided food by passersby, while they got water from the school.

Sunil, who came from Maidan Garhi to go to Begusarai, said he had been waiting there since 10am. “The authorities first said they would take us inside the school in the evening. But later some people said tomorrow morning. We failed to register online, so just walked here. We will sleep on the footpath tonight so that we are the first ones to enter tomorrow morning,” he added.

However, unlike what was seen outside the two schools in east Delhi, Shaheed Hemu Kalyani Sarvodaya Vidyalaya in Lajpat Nagar showed a different picture. The process seemed streamlined and elaborate arrangements had been made for the migrants.

Coolers had been placed in the huge ground and civil defence and other volunteers were seen calling out the names of the selected workers.

Tanpreet Singh, secretary of a gurdwara in Krishna Market, could be seen making a queue of migrants move systematically. The workers were happy to be given packed food.