Five migrant labourers walked all the way from Nagaland and reached Jorhat on Wednesday.

They covered nearly 25km on foot and crossed the border at Mariani without the knowledge of the authorities and reached the Lohpoia tea estate on the western outskirts of the district.

Their arrival resulted in a hue and cry among the workers of the garden who reportedly did not allow them to reside with their respective families and kept them in a dilapidated building at the estate.

The president of the Assam Tea Tribes Students’ Association, Dhiraj Gowala, alleged that the district administration had ignored them after being informed about the matter.

Rubul Ali, the officer-in-charge of Pulibar police station under which Lohpoia tea estate falls, said that as soon as he was intimated about this by someone on Thursday, he informed Jorhat police station following which a team of security personnel, accompanied by a sector magistrate and a medical team had visited the place.

The manager-in-charge of Lohpoia tea estate, Makhan Sharma, said the team had conducted medical tests of the five persons who had been put up at an abandoned office of the estate.

“We have provided them food and water. We have also asked the workers not to give them alcohol,” he said.

Sharma further said it had become difficult to lodge them anywhere as the workers in different lines of the estate objected to their being put up anywhere near them. The administration has also refused to take them to the quarantine facility at JMCH owing to scarcity of beds.

Additional deputy commissioner Bipul Das affirmed that the workers had been quarantined at the estate itself.

A Jorhat district official said many migrant labourers who had come from Nagaland were kept in quarantine facilities at Titabor.