The Bengal government on Friday launched an effort to reach out to migrant workers stuck in landslide-hit Wayanad with the assurance of all possible help after information reached Nabanna that some of them were finding it difficult to return home due to the devastation that had flattened large parts of the Kerala hill district.

As Kerala is among the states with the highest number of migrant workers from Bengal — estimates with the chief minister’s office put the number at around 9 lakh — the Mamata Banerjee government has swung into action without any delay.

The number of migrant workers from Bengal stuck in Wayanad is 242, law minister Malay Ghatak told the Bengal Assembly on Friday afternoon.

“We have come to know from the district authorities across Bengal that 242 migrant labourers are in Wayanad at this moment. We could establish contact with 155 of them and they are safe and physically fit. We expect that we will be able to contact the remaining people from the state by late this evening,” he said.

According to information available with the government, these migrant workers are from districts like Alipurduar, Jalpaiguri, Darjeeling, East and West Midnapore, Murshidabad and Birbhum.

Sources in Nabanna said Bengal chief secretary B.P. Gopalika was in constant touch with his counterpart in Kerala, V. Venu, to ensure that people from the state receive the necessary support.

A senior official told this newspaper in the evening that efforts to reach out to the stranded migrants had yielded positive results as the number of people from Bengal who could not be contacted had come down to 46 from 87 in the afternoon.

“These 46 people did not respond to our calls.... We are still trying to reach out to them,” said the source, adding that till Friday evening, there was no news of any casualty from Bengal.

A source in the state secretariat said that it had been conveyed to the migrant workers and their families that the government would make all arrangements to ensure their speedy return to Bengal.

“They will be flown back to Calcutta if they want to come back,” said the official.

Multiple sources in the government said that the chief minister was monitoring the process of bringing back the workers from Kerala as she felt that it was the state’s duty to stand by them in their hour of crisis.

“The chief minister always comes forward whenever people from the state face trouble. She had brought back nearly 40 lakh people from different states to Bengal during the pandemic. She is setting another example of her humanitarian face by standing by those stuck in Wayanad,” said a source.

Kerala has been one of the most favoured destinations for migrant workers from Bengal — a net out-migrant state, which means the number of people leaving the state in search of jobs is more than those coming here for livelihood — for the last few years primarily because of higher wages in the southern state.

A senior government official said that construction workers from Bengal prefer to work in Kerala as they get Rs 800 to Rs 1,000 daily while their daily earning is at best Rs 500 in Bengal.

“Rice is a staple in Kerala.... Besides, there are no restrictions on the consumption of fish and meat. So, people of Bengal find it easier to settle down in Kerala,” said a source.

Some officials, who handled the operation to bring back migrant workers from Kerala during the pandemic, told this correspondent during off-the-record conversations that labourers from Bengal can be found in all 14 districts in Kerala.

But Wayanad hosts the least number of workers because of lesser construction activities in the region.

“During Covid, we had brought back the maximum number of workers from districts like Malappuram, Thiruvananthapuram and Ernakulam. Out of 9 lakh workers, about 6.5 lakh were brought back from these three districts,” said an official.