Inquest ordered in B.C. farm worker deaths

An inquest has been ordered by the B.C. chief coroner's office into the deaths of three farm workers in a freeway crash last week in the Fraser Valley near Abbotsford.

Amarjit Kaur Bal, Sarabjit Kaur Sidhu and Sukhwinder Kaur Punia all died when the van they were riding in to work flipped on Highway 1, landing on its roof.

Fourteen other people were injured, some of them seriously.

The assistant deputy chief coroner, Jeff Dolan, said officials decided to go ahead with an inquest because of safety issues that have come to light since the crash.

"One of the factors certainly was the level of public interest in this particular incident. As a result, we did consider the issues that have been brought forward atthe very early stage of the investigation."

The RCMP has said the van was designed for 10 people, but the regular seats had been removed and replaced with wooden benches.

The passengers were not wearing seatbelts, an RCMP officersaid the day of the crash.

Spot check campaign ready to roll

B.C. Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon announced Tuesday that government inspectors will start doing random checks of commercial farm vehicles this week.

This follows a promise made Monday by the government to step up enforcement in the wake of the fatal accident.

"What I can tell you is, it will be happening as soon as this week. But I really don't want to give too much numbers or figures because I don't want to alert, if there are those that do make a habit of not obeying the situation, I don't want to unduly alert them," Falcon said.

The minister said the Motor Vehicle Branch will put what he called "significant resources" into the spot-check campaign.