While hundreds of migrant workers have returned to tea gardens in Jalpaiguri and adjoining districts, not a single test has been done among the people quarantined in garden hospitals, some with COVID-19 symptoms.

Chief medical officer of health for Jalpaiguri district, RN Pramanik, admitted that no proper test has been conducted among the migrant workers to see if they are carriers of the novel coronavirus. Several management staff in the gardens and conscious workers there fear community spreading from such migrants who have also not been properly quarantined.

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Sources said people in many gardens have maintained social distance with such returnees in many gardens. “Block Medical Officers of Health are monitoring and keeping in touch with garden managements about people who are under observation,” a Trinamul Congress trade union leader in Alipurduar, Bablu Mukherjee, said.

On the other hand, a group of health officials and doctors have expressed unhappiness over alleged lack of proper safety measures. Though Dr Pramanik claimed that proper arrangements are in place, hospital staff, who handled relatives of the woman from Kalimpong who died of VOCID-18, alleged lack of such arrangements and safety measures for them.

“We came to know only later that they were relatives of the Kalimpong woman,” a woman health worker, who attended to them, said. According to Dr Pramanik, Kalchini-based co-passengers of the Kalimpong woman in the flight, are “normal and fit” so far. It may be noted that Jalpaiguri district magistrate Abhishek Tiwary called a meeting yesterday to take stock of the situation in the tea gardens.

Commissioner, Jalpaiguri Division, Ajit Ranjan Bardhan also attended the meeting. Planters in Jalpaiguri district and adjoining areas urged Mr Bardhan to allow them to conduct skiffing of tea bushes so that the management can maintain the gardens for plucking leaves when the state gives them the permission.

According to planters, Mr Bardhan has assured that he would take up the matter with Chief Secretary Rajiva Sinha. All tea plantations in North Bengal are closed following the lockdown orders. Mr Bardhan also interacted with officials of plantation associations like the Indian Tea Association, Tea Association of India, and Terai Indian Planters’ Association. According to a senior planter, the government will not allow normal functioning of tea gardens before 14 April, the last day of the 21-day lockdown declared by the Centre.

Asked to comment, the Secretary of the Dooars Branch of the Indian Tea Association (DBITA), Sanjay Bagchi, said, “We have made all arrangements following guidelines of the government. All garden managements have extended cooperation to obey the medical protocol for safety of people, including tea workers in labour quarters in the gardens. All garden hospitals and group hospitals of Goodricke are being used to combat the coronavirus outbreak.”

The meeting also discussed using garden hospitals for migrants workers who have cough, cold and fever and for others to be isolated. Notably, on an average, over 100 migrant workers have arrived in each tea garden.