Migrants sprayed with disinfectants after arrival at Bareilly bus stand

Shahira Naim
Tribune News Service
Lucknow, March 30 

A team of sanitization workers on Sunday sprayed chemicals at migrants at the Bareilly bus stand after forcing them to sit on the street.

The migrants reportedly had trudged down from Gautama Buddha Nagar and Delhi. Local officials asked them to sit on a street near the bus stand and assured them food and transport. But before this, the migrants were liberally spraying with a disinfectant.

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Mohd Afzal, who was among them said, “About 50 of us were sitting waiting for food and the bus at the satellite bus station when some men in protective suits came and began spraying water on us. They said that they were from the sanitization team and were sanitizing us, and that it was for our good. The children began crying as the chemical entered their eyes and women were shocked at the manner in which they were sprayed upon, as if we were crops.”

According to sources, the sanitizing team sprayed the group with a diluted mixture of sodium hypochlorite.

Sodium Hypochlorite is the main ingredient in laundry bleach. It is extensively used as a bleaching agent in textile, detergent, paper and pulp industries. It is also used as a disinfectant.

Afzal alleged that after the spray some children complained of itching in their eyes while some women developed rashes.

“The chemical had a strange smell and after this incident, most of us left Bareilly and decided to continue our journey on foot instead of waiting for the promised bus,” he said.

Mohd Afzal works as a courier boy in a company in G B Nagar and is on his way home to Shahjahanpur.

Neither the Bareilly District Magistrate Nitish Kumar responded to the calls nor was any other official in either Bareilly or Lucknow forthcoming to comment on the incident.

Reacting to the development Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra in a tweet said: I am requesting the UP government that we will unitedly fight against this epidemic. Please do not display such inhuman behaviour. The migrant labourers are already very harassed. Do not bath them in chemicals. This will not protect them but make them sick.”

Samajwadi Party national president Akhilesh Yadav also questioned the spraying.

He asked: “Use of chemicals to sanitize travellers raises some questions – Did WHO issue instructions for this? Is there an antidote for the itching due to chemicals?  Had any arrangement been made for the people on the streets to change their clothes? Were any alternate arrangements made for the food they may be carrying which may have also drenched in chemicals?”