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Video Editor: Kunal Mehra
No beds to sleep on. No food. Toilets two kilometers away. No sanitisation despite testing positive.
These are just some things that migrants housed at quarantine centres in Jharkhand's Giridih, Ramgarh and Hazaribagh talked about as they shared their ordeal with The Quint.
In one quarantine centre in Jharkhand, out of 30 people, two people tested positive for COVID-19. Yet, 7 people were released and sent home without being tested. This is just an example of the sorry state of affairs in some of the quarantine centres across Jharkhand.
At the Ramgarh quarantine centre, migrant labourer who have returned home have been asked to sleep on floors. No beds have been provided to them. To make matters worse, there are potholes on the kuchha floor on the centre. ‘We have been sleeping on the floor. There's fear of snakes and scorpions. If these bite us, it will worsen matters’, Mohan Mahato, a migrant housed at the Ramgarh centre told The Quint.
The centre is away from the settlement and there’s erratic power supply. It’s completely dark in the night. Since it is close to a forest area, migrants say they get scared at night.
Out of the thirty people who were stationed at this quarantine centre, two people tested positive. The others claim that after they tested positive, neither was the centre sanitized, nor did anyone from the administration come to visit the centre. To top it all, seven of them, who had come in contact with those who tested positive, were sent back home without being tested.
Migrants staying at the centre in Giridih said that that they are not even provided food or water. They have to order food and water from home. Amid lockdown and fear of spread of the infection, their family members somehow manage to send them food and water.
‘Don't know about coronavirus but we will die of hunger for sure’, Ashok Kumar, a migrant staying at the centre said, as broke down before The Quint.
The centre doesn’t have water supply. The handpump outside the centre is not functional. There is a toilet in the centre but that isn’t functional either. The migrants have to walk two kilometers to use a toilet.
In Hazaribagh, the new primary school in Vishnugarh has been transformed into a quarantine centre. The migrants housed here told The Quint that no one from the administration has come to visit the centre or take note of the state of affairs there. There is no food, no water and no toilets available for those staying there. People have to bring their own bedding as well.
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