Labour Minister V. Sivankutty has ordered a probe by State Labour Commissioner S. Chithra into the accident at NeST Electronics City in Kalamassery on Friday that left four migrant workers dead and two others injured.
The government has taken steps to fly the bodies to their homes on Sunday and announced a relief of ₹2 lakh to the kin of the deceased. Free treatment will also be offered to the injured.
A day after the accident, it has emerged that the contractor, which NeST had claimed to have engaged for hiring workers, including the deceased, did not qualify as contractor under the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act. “The company has to take full responsibility of the accident, since the one named as the contractor was actually one of the hired employees. The workers were directly hired by the company and hence remains the principal employer. The person cited as contractor by the company has also said as much. Neither were the workers registered under the Act,” said Navas V.K., District Labour Officer (Enforcement).
The Labour department, which is preoccupied with formalities for sending the bodies homes, will soon turn the focus on to whether the company had complied with labour rules, including maintenance of a register under the Minimum Wages Act, he said.
Under the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, a contractor licensed under the Act has to be engaged for hiring workers. Then the company for which the workers are hired should register with the Labour department in its capacity as the principal employer.
Addressing the media at the accident site on Friday, District Collector Jafar Malik had said that the land originally belonging to Kinfra was leased out to NeST, which had outsourced the labour component through a contractor. The work on the site remains suspended till an inquiry into the incident by five departments is completed.
Meanwhile, the inquest and post-mortem of bodies were held on Saturday.
