Mumbai: Barely six months after they returned, thousands of migrants working in Mumbai and Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) are now re-packing their bags to go back home as Maharashtra is in the grip of a tsunami-like COVID-19 ‘second-wave’.
With night curfews, stringent daytime restrictions and a weekend lockdown imposed across the state, migrants from different parts of India are in a state of semi-panic, as daily new infections in the state soar in 50,000-plus range.
A majority of them, especially the skilled and semi-skilled workers, were brought back from their homes in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Gujarat, Telangana, Odisha with great difficulties by their employers after the phase-wise lockdown was eased that started in August 2020.