Four asphyxiate inside AMC pumping station

Four workers were killed after they entered a tank of a pumping station, allegedly without any safety equipment, in the city. The incident has once again raised questions about the safety of workers associated with contractors of the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC).

Police said that around 12.56 am on Sunday morning four workers were sitting close to a tank at the pumping station in Ambikanagar in Odhav when one of the workers fell into it. They said some sort of gas had likely emerged from the tank and knocked off one of the labourers. The other three probably might have jumped in to save their colleagues but all four of them suffocated to death due to the poisonous gas.

The supervisor soon realised that something was amiss and called the fire brigade officials who fished out the bodies of the four labourers. The labourers were identified as Surjeet Sahani (26), Sunil Sahani (24), Ravji Chauhan (37), and Lalsinh Ravat (32). Two of them belonged to Rajasthan while the rest were from Uttar Pradesh.

Police initially registered a case of an accident but later also booked the contractor for negligence. Fire department officials said when the four bodies were taken out they did not have any safety equipment on them.

Akshayraj Makwana, DCP Zone, 5 said that as of now a case of negligence has also been registered. "We are investigating to find out whether the four had been given adequate safety equipment before being asked to do the job. We also need to know if they had removed the safety gear after the work was over and whether the accident happened after that," said Makwana. The bodies have been sent for postmortem. The AMC officials, meanwhile, said they are probing the matter to know if there had been any lapse on the part of the contractor. Officials also said that the kin of the deceased would be compensated.

Purushottam Vaghela, who has championed the rights of several manhole workers in Gujarat and has helped them get compensation form the government said that safety procedures are rarely followed by AMC contractors. "Ideally, machine and not men should be used for such work. In the event a worker has to go down to such a dangerous place, adequate protection should be given. But every time such incident happens the AMC washes its hands off the matter stating that it was the contractor who was at fault," said Vaghela. He said that the contract that AMC enters into with the contractors does not stipulate that they need to have the necessary equipment in place. "Even when it stipulates, the civic body does not bother to check if the company has the necessary safety gears and whether it uses them," said Vaghela.

The storm water pumping stations are cleaned as part of the pre-monsoon preparedness for which the civic body outsources the work to some private contractors.

No lesson learnt from the past

Two sanitation workers and a contractor died inside a manhole in Bavla area of Ahmedabad Rural in April after they entered a sewer to clean it. In that case, the Bavla Nagarpalika had given the contract to maintain the sewer lines to a private contractor Rakesh Patel.