Online database for migrants to monitor their movement, help with travel

The Centre on Saturday said it has developed an online National Migrant Information System (NMIS) to track the movement of stranded labourers heading home and to further facilitate their travel.

“This system will help in speedy communication between states without creating additional work at the level of the field officers. It has additional advantages like contact tracing, which may be useful in overall Covid-19 response work,” read the order from the ministry of home affairs.

Amid a nationwide lockdown necessitated by the coronavirus outbreak, hundreds of migrants, for days together now, have been walking or hitchhiking their way to homes.

“The portal will work as a central repository and help in sending as well as receiving state/district to ask for and give their acceptance in an online format seamlessly,” the order said.

The states will be able to visualise how many people are going out from where and how many are reaching destination states. The mobile numbers of the people will be used for contact tracing and movement monitoring.

Earlier in the day, 24 migrant labourers were killed and several injured after the truck they were travelling in collided with another truck in Uttar Pradesh’s Auraiya district. On May 8 in another incident, 16 migrant labourers were crushed to death by a goods train in Maharashtra after they fell asleep on the tracks.