A caring gesture: Nitish sends representative to Jalandhar to meet Bihari accident victims!
Jalandhar: take random reports of accidents at construction sites and industrial areas all over the country, and there would be a good chance of Bihari labour being hurt or killed. These names and faces are forgotten instantly and often after the hullabaloo, the families do not even get compensated. In the case of Bihar, let us admit that this happens on a regular basis, given the scale on which Bihar exports man power to the whole country.
This is why when Bihar chief minister CM Nitish Kumar Yadav sent a government’s representative to take stock of the situation arising after the Jalandhar factory collapse and to meet the kin of the victims, it showed that their state of origin cares. Bihar’s deputy resident commissioner Amar Chatterjee, who arrived in Jalandhar last Friday, met many relatives of the victims present at the spot. “We are now praying that we should at least find their bodies intact and not in the forms of mangled remains, which are being found in the debris,” said a victim’s kin.
Chatterjee said he was sent to know about the status of the rescue operation and the issues of the kin of the victims. Expressing satisfaction with the rescue work, undertaken by the NDRF and Army with the support of volunteers, the official said, “the Bihar CM also wanted to know whether the victims wanted to raise any issues with the administration here.”
As big machines worked overtime to remove the debris of the collapsed factory, a detached foot came out with the debris, sending kin of the victims into despair with the thought of finding more mangled bodies. In all, 14 bodies had been taken out of the debris till now, and efforts were on to retrieve four more bodies. NDRF commandant R K Verma said that on spotting a body buried under a heavy beam, he showed it to victim’s father and told him that if they would try to pull it out it would become mangled, but if they would take it out intact after lifting the beam, then it would take some time. “His father took the second option saying that he wanted the body of his son intact,” Verma said. He said that the detached foot was of a body taken out on Thursday night.
Even as relatives of most of the victims had lost hope, Chandrawati, who reached here from Gorakhpur, UP, on Thursday night was optimistic of seeing her husband Bhagwan Dass alive. This simple village woman, who is also working in her village to make both ends meet, does not know that all around her everyone had lost the hope.
“I borrowed Rs 5,000 from a money lender in the village at five per cent per month interest and left Rs 2,000 at home as my husband had not got the salary. I have travelled here with Rs 3,000,” she said. Chandrawati spoke to her husband on phone two days before the mishap and had last met her husband 10 months ago when he visited the family. Bhagwan Dass was working in the factory for the last around 12 years.
Another woman Pacho Devi is waiting for the body of her son Pankaj, as she has come to terms with the “reality”. Patlu is waiting for the body of his grandson Mintu Kumar and Guddu is still looking for his brother Parmod. “We want that body of my son is handed over to us and care is taken that it is not damaged during the removal of debris,” Balbachan Dass told Chatterjee.
[courtesy: The Times of India]