Mumbai returnee tag stigmatises guest workers

Villagers are scared that guest workers returned from places with high number of corona positives will spread the virus

Mancherial: Workers returning from other states to their native villages in undivided Adilabad district to be with their families are being humiliated and stigmatised, especially if they are known to have come from Mumbai or Maharashtra, where the number of Covid cases is the highest in the country.

The villagers are scared that they will spread the virus, especially after some returning workers have been found to have contracted the disease.

Some 31 guest workers who returned their villages from Mumbai have tested positive for the virus. Two of them returned to Kagaznagar town in Kumarambheem Asifabad district and 27 arrived in Mancherial district. In Nirmal district, two guest workers returning from Mumbai tested positive for Covid-19.

All returning villagers are not being tested for Covid-19 but are just being told to stay in home quarantine. Those showing symptoms of the disease are being sent to government isolation centres.         

The attitude of the villagers towards the returning workers is so inhuman that the latter say it would have been better if they had died in Mumbai and not undertaken the arduous journey to return to their homes.

The returning workers in Mancherial district are natives of Hajipur, Luxettipet, Jannaram and Dandepalli mandals and they belong to the fishing community and worked in the harbour in Mumbai.    

Nineteen other suspected cases have been sent to a government isolation centre in Bellampalli and are awaiting the test results. They are family members and contacts of persons who tested positive for Covid-19.

Villagers of Bommena in Jannaram mandal obstructed the entry of guest workers from Hyderabad and officials had to intervene and put the guest workers in home quarantine. The same thing happened to workers who arrived in Rotiguda in Jannaram mandal from Mumbai.

A guest worker who returned to Rotiguda from Mumbai and was in home quarantine told this reporter: “I regret coming to my native village. It would have been much better staying back in Mumbai and dying there of corona instead of facing humiliation at the hands of my own villagers.”