Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi on Sunday requested the mobile operators to waive off the recharge fees of the citizens, particularly the poor migrants who are criss-crossing the country to reach their destinations amid the coronavirus outbreak.
In separate letters to all the heads of mobile operators, Priyanka said that lakhs of poor people are in transit mode and they don't have even money to feed themselves and thus extending their incoming and outgoing calls validity will certainly help them to stay connected with their near and dear ones in this hour of crisis.
Priyanka wrote to almost all telecom operators like Reliance Jio chief Mukesh Ambani, Airtel’s Sunil Bharti Mittal and Vodafone Idea boss Kumar Mangalam Birla, urging them to make incoming-outgoing calls free on their networks for at least one month for migrant workers during coronavirus lockdown. She has also written to BSNL chief PK Purwar, making the same request.
Congress shared the letters on Twitter. In one such letter to Ambani, she said she was writing to him on humanitarian grounds about the plight of the millions of migrant workers across the country who were trying to find their way home to their families battling hunger, thrust and disease.
She said that it was ‘our national duty to help our countrymen in this hour of crisis’. “There is one way in which your company Jio Telecommunications can make a huge difference at this moment. Many of the people going home have run out of money on their phone recharges. This means they are unable to call their families and their families are unable to receive their calls due to financial and mobility restraints,” Priyanka wrote.
The Congress leader further said urged Mukesh Ambani to make “incoming and outgoing call facilities on your service in the relevant areas available without charge for the next one month”. She wrote similar letters to other service providers such as Airtel, Vodafone Idea, and BSNL. This comes amid reports that thousands of migrant and daily wage workers were trying to rush back to their native places as they had no job in the cities anymore due to complete lockdown.
Taking up the cause of migrants' exodus a day earlier, Priyanka lashed out at the Centre for the "human tragedy".
Sharing some photos of thousands of daily wage workers and labourers at Delhi-Uttar Pradesh border on Saturday, waiting in long queues to board buses at the Anand Vihar Interstate Bus Terminal in Delhi, she said "India deserves better".
"A human tragedy in the streets of Delhi, Ghaziabad, Anand Vihar. Women, children and the elderly have been left to their own devices. They are, walking, riding rickshaws and sitting on the rooftops of the buses to return home. Don't know what is the government up to," Priyanka Gandhi wrote on Twitter.