New Delhi, May 5 (IANS): By deploying 67 Shramik Special trains, the Indian Railways has transported over 67,000 migrant workers stranded across the country, according to officials here on Tuesday.

Till Monday, the national transporter had run 55 trains. On the number of people ferried, the railway official said every train carried around 1,000 people. "Thus, so far, we have transported around 67,000 passengers," he said.

According to him, on Tuesday 21 more Shramik Special trains will start from different cities, including Bengaluru, Surat, Sabarmati, Jalandhar, Kota and Ernakulam.

The railways started running the Shramik Special trains for transporting stranded workers on May 1, almost 40 days after the passenger, mail and express trains were suspended. These trains are being operated on the request of state governments.

The first Shramik Special train with 1,200 migrants left Telangana for Jharkhand on May 1.

According to the guidelines, sending states will pay the consolidated fare to the railways, which they (sending states) can collect from the labourers or from the receiving states. The railways prints tickets to the specified destinations as per the number of passengers, indicated by the originating state.

The city authorities will handover tickets to passengers and hand over the total fair to the railways. Besides sanitisation, there are provisions for meal and packaged water on trains by the railways.

The railways is only running freight and special parcel trains to ensure supply of essential items during the lockdown.

On Tuesday, the number of Covid-19 cases in the country increased to 46,433 with 1,568 deaths.