250 people isolated in a school premise in Malda district are living in utterly inhuman conditions. These workers had returned to their home state after being stranded for weeks in other cities.
Community correspondent Soriya Banu reports that there is no one to clean the quarantine centre. There is no running water in the toilets. Food is served only once a day which too is not enough for all the residents and half of them go hungry. No government officials have come to check on them or to check the facility.
Rabiul Momin, one of the labourers interviewed by our community correspondents, narrates the discrimination faced by him in his own village, upon his return from Himachal Pradesh where he was working.
Momin says that once the lockdown was announced he returned to his village in West Bengal but the villagers did not allow him to enter. They harassed him and accused him of spreading Coronavirus. He says that despite getting a negative certificate from tests done, he wasn't allowed to stay there and was asked to shift to the quarantine centre.
One other labourer says he was harassed by police for four hours before he was shifted to the quarantine facility.
West Bengal now faces a double whammy of Covid-19 related infections and the aftermath of cyclone Amphan.
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