[ad_1]
Police officers examine the railway track after a train ran over migrant workers sleeping on the track in Aurangabad in Maharashtra on May 8, 2020. (REUTERS)
Sixteen workers were killed on Friday morning after stopping to rest on the train tracks in Aurangabad. They had walked 45 km from Jalna to Aurangabad, and were going to Bhusawal, another 120 km, on foot hoping to catch a train.
- News18 Bhopal
- Last update: May 8, 2020, 5:30 p.m. IST
One of the survivors of the Aurangabad train accident on Friday said the group of migrant workers had requested electronic transit passes a week ago, but decided to walk to their home state after receiving no response from authorities.
Sixteen workers were killed on Friday morning after stopping to rest on the train tracks in Aurangabad. They had walked 45 km from Jalna to Aurangabad, and were going to Bhusawal, another 120 km, on foot hoping to catch a train.
Dhirendra Singh, one of the three survivors, said they had pending work and a family at home and that they could not wait any longer to contact MP.
“We had requested the electronic passes a week ago with the MP authorities, but received no response,” said Singh, who is from the Maman village in the state’s Umaria district.
Singh survived the accident while walking a certain distance from the rest of the group, who sat on the train tracks to rest and then fell asleep. They were shot down by a freight train passing at 5.15 in the morning.
The tracks were full of shoes and other personal belongings. Even the rotis carried by the workers for their trip were seen scattered on the tracks.
Singh said that he and the other two survivors gave a frantic alarm to alert members of his group who were sleeping on the tracks about the rapidly approaching train, but their screams were not heard.
Among those killed were 12 migrant workers from the tribal-dominated Shahdol district, while the rest were from the neighboring Umaria district. A worker was injured in the accident. All of them were employed in an iron factory in Jalna.
The electronic passes necessary for migrant workers and others stranded due to the blockade have caused problems, as there have been several complaints that the portal does not provide an invalid response or pass.
Last week, the central government agreed to operate special “Shramik” trains for migrants who need to return to their homes for emergency reasons after 40 days of confinement, but many began to walk on their own due to problems obtaining permits.
The online link for electronic passes provided by MAP-IT, the MP government’s online authority that issued electronic passes, disappeared on Friday.
Authorities said the server is facing problems due to a sudden influx of e-pass seekers in recent days. “We will fix the technical problem,” said an official.
MAP-IT has stated that so far there have been 1.79 lakh applicants and more than 99,000 passes have been issued, while 3,400 applications have been rejected. The facility has registered 2.21 lakh of migrants as of now.
But reports also suggest that vendors have begun to trick people under the guise of the first electronic passes. Social activist Ajay Dubey claimed that the bureaucrats’ slack was responsible for incidents like the one in Aurangabad and demanded that guilty officers be searched. “Those responsible for bringing workers from other states back barely respond to calls,” he said.
MP BJP spokesman Rahul Kothari said there are some delays due to volumes. “The parliamentary government has brought back a lakh of migrant workers and others from other places and the number of those sent was slightly less,” he said.
Kothari also tried to blame the Maharashtra government, questioning why the workers walked on different paths than those of states like Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and others.
.
[ad_2]
