Sonu Sood arranges special flight for 177 Odisha girls who were stranded in Kerela

Bollywood actor Sonu Sood has been doing everything that he can since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic to help those who are less privileged than him. The actor has been continuously arranging for migrant workers to go home amid the nationwide lockdown by arranging buses and food for them and now on Friday, the actor helped 177 girls of Odisha’s Kendrapara district working in a garments manufacturing factory of Kerala return to their home state on Friday by a special flight that he provided for. 

The girls who belong to the Rajnagar block of Kendrapara district and working in Ernakulam arrived at Biju Patnaik International Airport in Bhubaneswar by an Air Asia flight from Cochin International Airport. For the uninformed, the girls had also posted a picture on social media urging Odisha authorities to evacuate them from Kerala as their factory had been closed due to lockdown. "Our owner had stopped paying us salaries and we want to go home at any cost. We have been stuck in our rooms since the factory shut down," the girls in the video said with folded hands. 

 

 

 

 

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 May 29, 2020 at 10:27am PDT

After the plight of the girls became public on social media, actor Sonu Sood came forward to help them. One of the girls who flew back in the Air Asia flight said after reaching home, "We had lost all hopes of going back. We thought we may travel back by bus or the Shramik Special trains. Officials from the Kerala labor department said they’ll put us on a train to Odisha. But all thanks to Sonu Sood, we managed to fly back to Odisha." 

Former Congress MLA of Rajnagar, Anshuman Mohanty, speaking about the same, said that Sonu had assured him that he can get more such stranded workers of Odisha in Kerala. So far, Sonu has sent some 12,000 migrant workers back to their homes in Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Bihar by buses, spending his own money for the travel.