India’s Supreme Court has intervened for the third time in a year after it learned of the plight of migrant workers during the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The apex court said on May 24 that its main concern is that benefits and schemes meant for migrant workers must reach them.
The court also said it was concerned about the slow process of registration and asked the federal and state governments to expedite it for migrants and those working in unorganized sectors.
“The intervention from the Supreme Court was much needed because the federal and state governments have failed miserably to handle the case of migrants who are left to cope with hunger, diseases and struggling to go back home to their respective states,” Father Jaison Vadassery, secretary to the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India’s Commission for Migrants, told UCA News.
The federal government had not learned from its mistakes last year when migrant workers were left in the lurch, resulting in hundreds of casualties, he said.
India should take the lead from other countries who have declared pandemic deaths as accidents so that insurance companies can provide compensation, he added According to the 2011 census, internal migrants account for 37 percent of India’s population