NEW DELHI: Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Thursday led the party’s Speak up India campaign asking the government to come to the rescue of lakhs of labourers and small traders who continue to battle the severe economic crisis caused by the COVID pandemic and the resultant lockdown.
In a video message, Sonia said the government must immediately open its coffers and help the needy.
Gandhi cited the travails of migrant labourers who continue to walk back home thousands of kilometres without food and water and asked the government to arrange their free transport back to their home states.
Gandhi said the migration of the scale being witnessed these days was unprecedented and the first since Independence.
“It is for the first time since Independence that the country has witnessed such a scale of pain and trauma with lakhs of famished labourers forced to walk hundreds of kilometres in the absence of transport,” Gandhi said, accusing the government of not doing enough for the poor.
She said jobs had been lost and businesses closed down with farmers having to toil hard to sell crops.
The Congress chief said her party would run a social campaign to give voice to the poor and urged everyone to join it.
She urged the Centre to unlock its coffers and help the needy and repeated her party’s old demands — cash transfer of Rs 7,500 per month in the account of every family for the next six months; safe and free return of labourers; employment, rations: 200 days under MNREGA to facilitate jobs in villages.
Later, Rahul Gandhi in a post repeated the same demands.