[1]Two migrant labourers have died, and at least 40 were taken ill with diarrheoa and vomiting, sickened by the contaminated drinking water their employers were providing them with.
Around 600 labourers, working on the construction site of a six storey residential apartment near Pallikarnai, were evacuated from the premises by corporation authorities on Tuesday.
The labourers were from Bihar, Orissa West Bengal and Assam and had been put up in temporary shacks within the same premises.
“On Monday night, private hospitals in the area reported a string of food-poisoning cases. When we reached the spot and enquired into the matter, we found out that too many people had fallen ill for the infection to be traced to a single rotten fish — it had to be the water,” said a corporation sanitary officer.
They found that the construction site had been purchasing from a private firm lorry loads of water with residual contamination that triggered the diarrheoa outbreak.
Lal Chand, 24, was pronounced brought dead at the government Royapettah hospital and Sukumar Thudu, 21, died at the Chrompet government hospital.
Their post-mortem reports are awaited.
“We have ordered their employers to shift them out of the site and provide them with clean food. Metro water tankers are supplying them with clean water, and we have also dissolved chlorine tablets in the water sources in the locality,” said a corporation health official, pointing out that most of the affected people were either stable, or already discharged.
Three men who displayed severe symptoms are receiving treatment at the Communicable Disease Hospital in Tondiarpet.
Photocaption—
Migrant workers leave the construction site with their possessions. While many of them quit to return to their native villages, others were shifted to different quarters.
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