All the 29 Jharkhand labourers, who were stranded in Chamoli after the glacial burst that triggered an avalanche on February 7, have returned home safely, officials from the State Control Room said on Monday, claiming that the labourers faced financial crisis and other challenges in logistics during their journey from Uttarakhand to Jharkhand.
However, none of the 14 State migrants reported missing from the site of the disaster have been found or identified so far. At least nine migrants from Lohardaga, four from Ramgarh and one from Bokaro have been untraceable since the incident in Chamoli. While the various district officials are coordinating with families of the missing labourers, none of the districts have officially reported any casualty in the Chamoli incident so far.
Among the over two dozen labourers who returned from Uttarakhand, as many as 10 are from Latehar, seven from Ramgarh, three from Bokaro, seven from Jamtara and two from Hazaribag, highlights data compiled by the state control room, which has been receiving calls from stranded labourers and coordinating with authorities to ensure safety of Jharkhand migrants in Uttarakhand since February 8.
Meanwhile, officials from the concerned district administration have also contacted employers and contractors who had taken Jharkhand labourers for work to Uttarakhand. Document verification work was still in process and the employment agencies have been asked to cooperate with the state in providing information related to the missing labourers.
The state control room has also registered eight migrant labourers from other states and has informed the authorities in the respective states. Two labourers each from Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, one from Uttar Pradesh and three from Karnataka had contacted the state control room for help. All these labourers were stranded in Chamoli and could not contact authorities in their respective states, officials said.
Santosh Singh, a Latehar labourer, who worked at a National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) site in Chamoli, reached home on Sunday. He said that his employer had booked bus tickets for him and his nine fellow labourers from Chamoli to Haridwar, from where they took a train to Dehri-On-Sone and eventually entered the Jharkhand border on Saturday.
“The journey was difficult as we did not have cash in hand, but we managed to reach home. We traveled for more than 48 hours at a stretch to reach Jharkhand from Chamoli,” said Singh. At least 54 people are feared dead and several others missing following a glacial burst in Uttarakhand's Chamoli district which triggered an avalanche and massive flooding alongside the Alaknanda and Dhauliganga rivers .