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In the meantime, tragedy swept the growing fields. Sukhdeep Madhar, a seven month-old baby, drowned when she rolled off a small bunkbed into a large bucket of drinking water in the converted horse stall used to accommodate her family. The farm owner had provided no running water.
Barely a week later, three young boys, left to play by themselves while their parents picked berries, drowned in a nearby abandoned gravel pit. The deaths shocked British Columbians. Decrying the “horror” of living conditions on the farm, a coroner’s inquest into the infant death called for immediate inspections of all agricultural accommodation in the province.
For the families of the three drowned boys, the CFU helped win $30,000 in damages from the gravel-pit owner. The union pressed forward with demonstrations, public meetings and well researched briefs, backed by a supportive media and public.
With no comprehensive regulations or mandatory training in place, nineteen-year-old farm worker Jarnail Singh Deol died of pesticide poisoning.
When a coroner’s jury ruled the death of Deol was ‘preventable homocide’ and said the government was partly responsible, the Social Credit government announced WCB coverage would be extended to agricultural workers effective April 4, 1983. They reneged on that commitment just before that spring’s election campaign. Raj Chouhan lambasted the turnabout as the government’s “most dishonest betrayal.”
Farmworkers would have to wait until 1993 before they were brought under the same health and safety umbrella as other BC workers.