Two persons died of asphyxiation on Friday while cleaning a sewage tank located behind the defence facility inside Fort St. George, which houses the Secretariat.
The police said the sewage was pumped to a tank behind the defence establishment on Flag Staff Road.
The cleaning contract was given to Srital Systems in Madhavaram.
The private contractor engaged five men from Sathya Nagar. All of them entered the tank and were cleaning it.
Around 11 a.m, one of the workers, K. Santhosh, 35, collapsed and his colleague K. Raja, 40, who tried to rescue him, also fell unconscious. The others — Venkatesh, Panneerselvam and Manivannan — managed to get out of the tank.
The staff from the defence establishment pulled out Santhosh and Raja and rushed all the workers to the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital. Santhosh and Raja were declared dead owing to asphyxiation, the police said.
The police booked a case against the contractor under the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013, and Section 304A of the IPC (Causing death by negligence).
