During a joint meeting of Nepali and Indian officials on Tuesday in Dharchula of India, the Nepali authorities also urged their Indian counterparts to make it mandatory for all road construction consultants to provide insurance facilities to Nepali workers in future.[break]
“The Indian authorities were positive about compensating the victims´ families,” said Assistant Sub-inspector Harka Bahadur Ayer, who reached Dharchula on Monday to facilitate the process of handing over the dead bodies to the victims´ families.
According to Ayer, Himesh Kharkawal, an MLA from Champawat constituency in the Indian state of Uttarakhand, has also expressed his commitment to provide compensation to the families of the victims.
On Sunday evening, seven Nepali migrant workers, all of them from Baitadi district, were buried under a huge boulder brought down by a massive landslide in Pangwa -- an Indian village some 50 km north of Dharchula that shares its border with Nepal.
Six of the dead bodies were handed over to their families in the Indian town of Lohaghat on Tuesday. However, the dead body of Jhupi Ram Suni had not been recovered until Tuesday. The police believe that Jhupi Ram´s body fell into the Dhauli Ganga River.
A group of 14 Nepali workers from Bishalpur and Sharmali VDCs of Baitadi district had reached Uttarakhand to dig a road track only a month ago. With the deaths of the seven Nepali workers, the remaining seven workers also returned to Dharchula on Tuesday.
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