A 24-year-old labourer Mukesh Sikarwar, was killed and five others travelling were wounded when the auto-rickshaw carrying them to MP’s Morena district overturned on Saturday here, police said.
Most occupants of the autorickshaw — overloaded with 13 passengers -— were labourers returning from Gujarat. More than 30,000 labourers have been travelling through past four days on foot or whatever transport they could manage to rush home after they were left with no work due to the nationwide lockdown announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the wake of coronavirus pandemic outbreak.
While the congregation of people is banned and trains have been stopped in order to prevent the spread of coronavirus, panicked labourers have ignored safety alerts, Rau police station in-charge Inspector Dinesh Verma said.
The five injured have been rushed to MY hospital in Indore city 25 km away, he said.
The migrant labourers, who worked in Gujarat, entered the state from Pitol check post of Jhabua district in western MP and were on their way to their home district Morena, the Inspector said.
Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan in a televised message said he spoke with Chief Ministers and Chief Secretaries of other states to request them to hold back the state workers out there.
“I have requested them to make food and stay arrangements for our people in their states in the wake of lockdown to check the spread of COVID- 19,” Chouhan said.
Thousands of migrant labourers from MP overlooked Gujarat government’s request to stay back. Labour contractors who engaged them were reluctant to pay for their stay and meals leaving them to fend for themselves.