At least eight labourers were killed and around 50 others sustained injuries in a truck collision in Madhya Pradesh’s Guna late Wednesday night, news agency ANI reported.
The labourers were travelling in the truck from Maharashtra to their native place in Uttar Pradesh when it collided with a bus in Guna’s Cantt PS area last night. The injured were moved to the nearest district hospital. More details on the accident are awaited.
Meanwhile, in another mishap involving migrant workers, six labourers lost their lives while four others were injured as a roadways bus ran over them in Uttar Pradesh’s Muzaffarnagar late Wednesday night.
Madhya Pradesh: 8 labourers dead & around 50 injured after the truck they were travelling in, collided with a bus in Cantt PS area in Guna last night. Injured persons shifted to district hospital.All the 8 killed labourers were going to their native places in UP from Maharashtra. pic.twitter.com/OaB9SCLpjY
— ANI (@ANI) May 14, 2020
The labourers were on their way to Bihar from Punjab when the accident took place.
Amid the coronavirus lockdown, the country has witnessed an exodus of migrant labourers, many of those often resort to risky measures just to reach their native land. Most are seen travelling in a risky situation with no masks in overcrowded trucks.
Rising temperature and death of at least 8 migrant workers in the past 20 days led to Madhya Pradesh government lifting restrictions on the MP-Maharashtra border for labourers from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand, officials said.
The influx of migrant labourers, about 25,000 per day on an average, has caused worries to the administration. These labourers are covering hundreds of kilometres travelling or walking through the state up to the UP border. Screening such a large number of workers, including the elderly, women and children, is practically not possible, officials said.
