District officials across the state have launched a hunt for new quarantine buildings in the wake of the education department setting a deadline of June 20 to vacate and sanitise schools currently housing migrant workers that are slotted as higher secondary examination centres.
A few papers of the higher secondary examination had to be postponed after the Covid-19 outbreak and subsequent lockdown. The papers are likely to be held on July 2, 6 and 8.
“We have been asked to vacate those buildings and sanitise them properly within June 20 and hand them over to the school education department. The (cleaning) job must start within June 15,” said a senior health department official.
Officials said several south Bengal districts had selected hundreds of schools to use them as quarantine centres with lakhs of migrant labourers coming back home from other states.
The state government has made institutional quarantine mandatory for migrants coming from five states — Delhi, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Madhya Pradesh — and schools were needed to house them.
Around 1.54 lakh people are staying at thousands of institutional quarantine centres set up mainly in schools.
“We took over local schools as quarantine centres as it was found acceptable. Keeping workers in buildings outside their area of residence had sparked protests,” said an official.
But what was convenient even a month ago is no longer so. For example, there are around 26 schools in East Burdwan alone that are both quarantine centres and higher secondary exam centres.
Purulia has around eight such schools. Districts such as Birbhum and Bankura have around a dozen schools from where migrants need to be vacated.
“We have issued orders to vacate the school building and accommodate workers elsewhere. School buildings will be sanitised and handed over to school authorities. Work is on,” said Arindam Niyogi, the additional district magistrate (general) in East Burdwan.
An official said if the inflow of migrants increased, home quarantine might be the only solution.
