Three migrant workers from Murshidabad on Friday died while working on a 27-storey under-construction building in Ghaziabad of Uttar Pradesh, the tragedy exposing how daily labourers have to work putting their lives at risk.
“We have come to know from their fellow workers that they were working while holding onto a rope.... They came in contact with a live wire, got electrocuted and fell off,” said a district official.
The incident, in the backdrop of 23 migrant deaths from Bengal in Mizoram on August 23 after an under-construction railway bridge collapsed, prompted the BJP to ask why people were leaving the state in droves in search of jobs. Trinamul raised questions on the “absence” of basic safety for workers in BJP-ruled states.
A source in Nabanna said chief minister Mamata Banerjee asked state urban development minister Firhad Hakim and Rajya Sabha MP Samirul Islam, who also chairs the West Bengal Migrant Workers’ Welfare Board, to reach Murshidabad fast and help the families with the cremation of bodies and other formalities.
A source said Gokul Mondal, 44, Subhankar Roy, 31, and Israil Sheikh, 33, were killed after they fell off the high-rise when they came in touch with the electric wire.
Mondal and Roy were residents of Dhulian in Samserganj, and Sheikh was from Murshidabad’s Farakka. Another worker from Farakka survived the fall.
One of their coworkers said they were not told that the black wire passing through the building was a live wire.
“No one told us about the live wire. We were working by hanging from a rope attached to the high-rise.... It was not possible for them to hold on to the rope after getting electrocuted. So all of them fell and died,” said coworker Uday Mondal.
Trinamul leaders claimed the back-to-back incidents in Mizoram and Uttar Pradesh exposed that the two BJP-ruled states had no policy for the labourers working at any construction site.
“Migration from one state to another is not new and Bengal also has lakhs of migrant workers from other states.... The two incidents in Mizoram and Uttar Pradesh prove that these BJP-ruled states do not have any policies regarding the security of the workers,” said Trinamul Rajya Sabha MP Samirul Islam.
“If there was minimum vigil by the local body in Ghaziabad, it would not have given permission to construct the high-rise without relocating the live electric wire. In the same way, the lapses of the Mizoram government and the railways got exposed after the deaths,” added the MP.
The state government did not waste any time communicating with the bereaved families and asked the district administration to arrange the transport of the bodies and last rites.
“The bodies of the three migrants are on their way home after the post-mortem is done,” said Jangipur SDO Shinjan Sekhar.
The BJP, trying to make the migrant deaths to showcase joblessness under Mamata Banerjee’s regime, sharpened its attack after the Ghaziabad incident.
“It is unfortunate that you will always find some people from Bengal in any mishap that takes place in any other parts of the country.... Earlier people from Uttar Pradesh used to come to Bengal to work and now the flow has reversed,” said Sakharav Sarkar, the BJP’s Behrampore organisational president.