India to provide free food grains to millions of migrant workers

Migrant workers and their families wait for transport to reach a railway station to board trains to their home state Uttar Pradesh, after a limited reopening of India’s giant rail network following a nearly seven-week lockdown to slow the spreading of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Ahmedabad, India, May 14, 2020. REUTERS/Amit Dave

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – India will provide free foodgrains to millions of migrant workers hardest hit by a weekslong lockdown and offer employment under a rural jobs programme, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Thursday.

The government will spend 35 billion Indian rupees ($463.06 million) on food for nearly 80 million migrant workers for the next two months, Sitharaman told a news conference.

The allocation is part of a 20 trillion rupee ($266 billion) fiscal and monetary package to support the ailing economy. Millions of workers have fled the big towns after they lost their jobs following the lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus.

($1 = 75.5840 rupees)

Reporting by Aftab Ahmed and Manoj Kumar; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani

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