Lucknow : In a repeat tragedy, migrant workers numbering 24 were killed and scores injured as the truck they were headed homeward in, collided in the pre-dawn hours, this time in Uttar Pradesh’s Auraiya district.
Laid-off and cashless, separate groups of migrants had hitched their ride on two trucks from Rajasthan and Delhi bound for Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal. One of the trucks was loaded with goods and had migrants sitting on stacked sacks. These are the people who were hurled onto road in the collision impact and lost lives.
According to officials, the two vehicles were overloaded and efforts are on to find why this happened.
Despite special trains and buses put up for hauling stranded migrants back to their homes, hundreds of thousands labourers take to foot-travel or hitch hiking to return to their home states, mostly because of being unable to sustain themselves during the uncertain wait-period or not being able to access the facility .
The repeat tragedies, where scores of home-headed migrants get killed in transit, prompted nationwide outcry and strong reactions from opposition leaders at Centre in the past weeks.
Incidentally, the Supreme Court yesterday dismissed a petition seeking the Centre to arrange food and water for migrants in transit.”It is impossible for this court to monitor who is walking and not walking,” the apex court had said adding that “Let each state decide. Why should the court hear or decide.”
