Silchar/Hailakandi, July 2: The diarrhoea outbreak in Hailakandi district claimed two more lives today, taking the toll to 21. Two more persons died at Roopacherra tea garden in the south Assam district. Sources said 33-year-old Raj Kumar Bhar and 40-year-old Gita Roy were the latest victims.
At least 21 labourers have died of diarrhoea and other enteric diseases in Sonacherra, Roopacherra and Serispore gardens in the district over the past four days.
The district?s joint director of health (in-charge), A.K. Bayan, today blamed the Roopacherra tea garden authorities for not doing enough to contain the outbreak of the disease.
The district health authorities had warned the garden, along with several others in the district, sometime ago about the possibility of gastro-enteritis and other water-borne diseases, Bayan said. Yet the garden authorities did not pay attention to the official instructions, he added.
However, Bayan claimed that he has not received any report on the death of a labourer at Serispore tea garden, owned by the Calcutta-based Rydac Syndicate Company Ltd, due to diarrhoea.
Hailakandi deputy commissioner Jatin Gogoi said the Calcutta-based Bajoria group?s Roopacherra Tea Co. Pvt. Ltd, which owns the 800-hectare garden here, would be asked to pay compensation to the relatives of the deceased. Most of the deaths were confined to three families, he added.
Gogoi said he would order a probe into the reports that the labourers had contracted the disease after drinking contaminated water from the streams. There have been allegations that pesticides are also washed down from the tea plants to the streams.
Official sources in Hailakandi said two medical relief teams had set up camp at Roopacherra tea estate.
Gogoi added that he has received reports of the investigations conducted into the deaths of the past few days from an executive magistrate who went to the plantation yesterday as well as Bayan.
Both of them have claimed in their reports that the situation in the garden is now under control after the medical teams were rushed there.
The medical teams have pitched tents in the gardens and there was no need to panic, Gogoi added.