It was the site engineer’s negligence that had caused the accident at the Metro Rail construction site in St. Thomas Mount on January 10, an investigation commissioned by Chennai Metro Rail Limited (CMRL) has revealed.
Even as police investigation is on, CMRL simultaneously commissioned its own investigation – carried out by its general consultant — into the mishap which claimed a worker’s life and injured three others, following a girder crash.
According to a senior official with CMRL, safety experts with the general consultant have pointed to the engineer’s failure in ensuring the weights on the girder were placed correctly. Consequently, there was an imbalance in the girder, causing it to pitch forward and downward, leading to the fatal accident. The engineer was engaged by Larsen & Toubro (L&T), one of the contractors engaged by CMRL.
On January 10, St. Thomas Mount police had registered a case under section 304 A (causing death by negligence) of the IPC, and arrested site engineers Marudupandian and Sandeep Singh and safety officers Bineeth and Vimal. On Tuesday, however, a senior officer said investigation was still on and that they were yet to ascertain the cause. “This is a peculiar accident and we will take some more time,” he said.
Meanwhile, Chief Minister Jayalalithaa on Tuesday announced a sum of of Rs. 1 lakh as compensation to the family of Dimple Shah, the worker who died in the accident. He was a migrant labourer from Bihar, engaged by Shelmec, a sub-contractor roped in by L&T.
The other three workers who were injured, Mumtaz Ansari, Nand Paswan and Samir Khan, would receive Rs. 25,000 each from the Chief Minister’s Public Relief Fund, according to a press release.
Seriously? you were able to pinpoint and blame one guy called
Engineer..really? Was he also criminally culpable as well according to
your one sided report. Poor scape goat. How did you come to that
determination of his negligence?? Weren't all the IAS babu's running the
metro equally criminally cuplable for negligence..then I have to ask,
doesn't that negligence trickle up the ladder to the top Managing
Director..nice closure report to blame it on one guy...alone..nobody
stands up for that engineer guy,.!
In any bridge construction projects or as a matter of fact for any project that is carried out in India there are no safety procedures being followed in the name of saving money. So these types of mishaps will continue to happen. Look at the mentality of the common people. Does anybody follow safe commuting on the roads. They just want to move ahead and nobody cares about safety on the road. How can you blame any body in a society of safety ignorants (the great Indians)
And adding to all the other comments, the company must be forced (or bullied, use whatever possible way) to pay "heavy" compensation so that the company will think thrice before doing such job and put everything in order.
Targeting one engineer is absurd.
To Vaidya,
Thats how the case can be closed..
first root cause of the problem should be identified and if is fault
found , register a case against concerned company not against one
person.
@Vaidya, I am wondering the same. Was there a Standard Operating
Procedure? Was it approved? If there was none, what was the immediate
supervisor or Project Manager doing? Was there a risk analysis done? Was
there a HSE team member or representative in site?
The bottom line is, it just can't be One Engineer's responsibility...
For a major of instalaation of big GIRDERS FOR RAILWAYS, HOW CAN U place reponsibility on one individual,since there should a team of experts in Engieering for erection andsuperfvision and How thelift or an elevator which does the job with heavy cranes can give away?
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