States should have done better, says Niti Aayog CEO

New Delhi: Amitabh Kant, Niti Aayog CEO, has said that the governments in states could have done better to take care of migrant workers who are undergoing a horrendous time because of the nationwide COVID 19 lockdown.

Talking to NDTV, Amitabh Kant said, “it is important to understand that migrants issue was a challenge because over the years, we have created laws which have led to a huge amount of informal workers in economy,”

“This was the responsibility of the state governments to ensure that the workers were well taken care of. In a vast country like India, federal government has a limited role. This was a challenge where I think we could have done a much, much better job of taking care of every single worker at the state, local, district level.”

Thousands of migrant workers set on foot to make their way over long distance to their hometowns after the Centre imposed the nationwide lockdown on March 25. Several people among them died of illness or in accidents along the way.

A special relief package announced by the centre was criticized as inadequate to solve the plight of the migrants travelling back to their hometowns.