At least five migrant labourers who were travelling back home from Telangana were killed and 13 others were injured when their truck overturned in Madhya Pradesh's Narsinghpur district.
The accident took place near Patha village on Saturday night when nearly 20 migrant labourers were going in the truck to Jhansi and Etah in Uttar Pradesh from Hyderabad in Telangana, Additional Superintendent of Police Rajesh Tiwari said.
Five labourers were killed and 13 others were injured after the mangoes-laden vehicle overturned, he said. The injured persons were admitted to the district hospital for treatment, he added.
Just last week, one person was killed and 10 others were injured when a bus carrying 40 migrant labourers from Hyderabad collided with a fruit-laden truck on NH-16 near Kuhudi of Khordha district in Odisha.
The migrant workers belonging to Kendrapara, Puri and Cuttack districts had hired the bus from Hyderabad.
While the Telangana government has assured migrant workers that it is operating special trains to send them home and bearing the costs for the same, many migrant workers have turned to private bus operators to ferry them to their native states, out of desperation. They have also hitched rides on top of goods carriers if they happen to be going in the same direction.
Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao last week announced that 40 special trains will be operated from the state every day over the next the one week to send migrant workers back to their respective states.
The promise remained unfulfilled, however, as the Telangana government said that it was having trouble with the recipient states facing an influx of natives returning home, which they are unable to accommodate.
Moreover, the government stopped fresh registration of migrant workers on Friday, putting thousands of them in a tight spot.
“There are already three lakh migrants who have registered, we have to clear them first. If there is an emergency or need, further registration will be done,” a senior officer told TNM earlier this week.
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PTI inputs