A 20-year-old youth sustained injuries on his spine, face and limbs when the hydraulic ladder on which he was perched, to clean lamps on the medians of Grand Southern Trunk Road in Tambaram, collapsed.
The youth, Paulraj, police said, was out of danger. He was continuing to receive treatment in a private hospital in Tambaram. Tambaram Municipality staff said the local body had recently procured a hydraulic ladder to clean lamp-posts, bulbs and their external casings on GST Road in its jurisdiction between Tambaram Sanatorium and Irumbuliyur.
The municipality had placed the orders for the hydraulic ladder, at an estimated cost of Rs.12 lakh with a private company in Coimbatore. The ladder arrived in Tambaram only a few days ago and was installed on a mini-lorry normally used in garbage collection and disposal and modified accordingly.
It was first used on Wednesday and on Thursday morning, staff started cleaning the lamps when the ladder collapsed all of a sudden.
Paulraj, perched within the ‘chair' on top of the hydraulic ladder, fell on the road from a height of about 30 feet. He was rushed to a private hospital.
Sources said the municipality was yet to make the payment and as the machine had arrived only recently, the private company that had supplied it had agreed to pay for the damages.
