Two pregnant women on Tuesday, April 5, 2016 collapsed and died while waiting for a Verification Team from the office of the Account General to screen them at the Bauchi State local government education secretariat.
The screening was said to be one of the criteria to be met by the over 6000 teachers before they would receive their salaries which had not been paid them in months.
An eye-witness who identified himself as Abubakar Yusuf, a teacher at the Baba Didi primary school told Vanguard that the first woman, who was seven months pregnant, fainted when the crowd were pushing to be verified, a situation that triggered a congestion during the exercise.
He said: “Because we have not been paid for three months. People came from all the local government areas of the state, so there was a massive crowd that gathered at the venue.
“The verification exercise took us by surprise because we were in the classroom teaching when we were summoned for the screening. That was why there was a large turn-out of people.
“Some of the people who came early were lucky enough to be verified, but as the crowd kept increasing, people began to push each other. In the process, an unidentified pregnant woman fainted and went into a comma.
“Another pregnant woman also collapsed and had a miscarriage instantly. The two pregnant women were rushed to the hospital for treatment. We later heard that they died.”
Yusuf decried the exercise which according to him was not favourable to the life and health of people.
He further urged the government to proffer possible means to make the exercise easier for the teachers to avoid recording further deaths and casualties.
