Migrants coming from Valsad pitch in to feed each other

Tea-sellers from Mira-Bhayandar near Manor on the Mumbai Ahmedabad highway

Kumar approaches a dhaba on the highway to buy food for himself and his friends. The group had walked over 50 km that day without any food. Having paid R4,000 each for the trip, the group has run out of cash. A plate of vegetable for R70 and chapattis at R15 each are too costly. So the group of around eight huddles near the dhaba and shares a half-kg packet of namkeen.

"Food has become unaffordable. Our only aim is to reach home now," Kumar said.

Kumar and his friends are textile mill workers from Valsad, Gujarat, who left the place on Sunday amid no salaries for a month. The group claims that they could not find any means to travel to Uttar Pradesh so they set out for Maharashtra.

Migrants at the Mumbai Nashik highway wait for trucks that can ferry them to their hometowns. Pics/Ranjeet Jadhav

Apart from Kumar, the other workers were identified as Nirala Prasad, Manoj Kumar, Vinod Kumar, Rajtilak, Amit Kumar, and Prahlad Verma. They also claim that to avoid police check posts, the trekked through a forested patch for three hours and entered Maharashtra.

Verma, a native of MP, said the government should have made adequate measures to help migrants go home. "We trekked through a forest area for 50 to 60 km with hardly any food or water. After somehow crossing into Maharashtra, we approached a truck driver going to UP. Each of us has paid R4,000," Verma said.

Costly way home
While some don't have any money left, those who have some left are pitching is so everyone can get some food and water.

Textile mill worker Prahlad Verma

Those who have money are paying huge amounts to truck drivers to reach Gujarat. Others are walking.

A group of tea-sellers from Dungarpur district in Rajasthan was walking towards Gujarat. The tea-sellers used to operate in the Mira Road-Bhayandar belt.

One such tea-seller, Lokesh Kumar, said, "We used to earn hand-to-mouth as our income depended on daily business. There has been no work for the past month. We are forced to spend whatever little savings we have."

"Recently, we had been relying on food provided by NGOs and other groups of Good Samaritans. But for how long can we depend on them? We don't have money to buy food, so going in a truck is impossible. Hence, we are walking towards Gujarat. Once we reach there, our relatives will arrange for a truck for us," Lokesh said.

Lokesh and his friends left from Mira-Bhayandar on Sunday. At 4.30 pm on Monday, they had reached a toll plaza located right after the Vaitarna river on Mumbai Ahmedabad Highway near Manor.

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