Mizoram deaths put migrant labour issue under the scanner

Trinamool Congress has alleged that dead bodies of the workers arrived in pathetic condition from Mizoram.

- SUPROTIM MUKHERJEE

Sitting on the verandah of her one-storey house in Malda district’s Sattari area, 32-year-old Smriti Sarkar is at a loss for words. A few days ago, she had a family. Now, she is mourning the death of her husband, son, father and brother—all killed after an under-construction railway bridge collapsed in Sairang, near Aizawl in Mizoram on Wednesday.

Abdul Sattar is mourning the death of his 20-year-old son. “My son Sariful Sheikh was working there. The only earning member of my family is no more,” he said.

All five, like many others from the district, had gone to Mizoram a month ago to work as labourers in the railway project. Now, 26 of them are dead.

Thirteen victims were from Chouduar village in Malda, and, of these six from one family. A pall of gloom has descended on the village. On Thursday, leaders of Trinamool Congress, including Ministers, and Samirul Islam, a newly elected Rajya Sabha MP who has just been named as the first chairman of the West Bengal Migrant Workers Welfare Development Board, visited Chouduar village. The state government will extend an ex-gratia of Rs 2 lakh each, West Bengal’s Minister of State for Irrigation Sabina Yasmin informed the bereaved families.

On Friday, West Bengal Governor C.V. Ananda Bose visited Malda by train. He handed over cheques of Rs. 9.5 lakh sent by the Ministry of Railways along with a cash grant of Rs. 50,000 to each family of the deceased workers in Malda in the presence of Railway officials.