Lockdown plight: Labourers who sold goats for a flight ticket will finally fly home
IndiGo has agreed to help the three to fly from Mumbai after their flight was cancelled.
by Agencies
Three migrant labourers, who pooled all their savings and sold goats to buy airline tickets to Kolkata only to be told that their flight got cancelled, will finally fly home.
IndiGo has agreed to help the three to fly from Mumbai to their state. "We are reaching out to these passengers right away. Rest assured, we shall be accommodating them on the next available flight or providing them with a full refund,'' the airline said, reacting to a TOI report. The three have been booked on a June 1 flight after they decided not to take the first flight out on May 28.
The workers, from West Bengal, haven’t earned any income since the end of March when Prime Minister Narendra Modi imposed a nationwide lockdown to contain the spread of the coronavirus. They’d managed to raise Rs 30,600 for the air tickets, only to be told their flight was canceled and there wouldn’t be any refunds. The family of at least one of them raised the money by selling three goats, the newspaper reported.
The flight was canceled as West Bengal imposed restrictions on airline services, civil aviation minister Hardeep Singh Puri said in a Twitter post. IndiGo booked tickets for the workers for June 1 at no extra charge.
The incident puts the spotlight on consequences of strict stay-at-home orders. The lockdown has left millions of migrant workers stranded around the country without access to livelihoods, forcing some to walk hundreds of miles to get back to their villages, as all modes of transport were suspended. Earlier this month, a freight train ran over more than a dozen workers heading back home on foot when they stopped to rest along the railroad assuming there were no services.
The canceled flight was a result of poor coordination between states and the Centre, which allowed airlines to sell local flight tickets, only to see some states blocking them just before air transport was supposed to resume. Airlines around the world are not refunding passengers in cash if a flight is canceled due to government orders related to the outbreak, instead offering them credit to use in future flights.
The migrant workers, who work at a construction site in Mumbai, tried to book a train ticket but failed. Sona Mullah (46), one of the labourers, said he earns Rs 15,000 a month and sends home Rs 10,000. To add to the family income, his wife back home in Murshidabad keeps goats. "Last week, we sold all the three for Rs 9,600 so that I could pay Rs 10,200 for my air ticket,'' he said.