Workers unsafe in MMRDA’s own backyard

Officials of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) often talk about safety measures required in its various infrastructure projects. However, most of them are unaware of what is happening in their own backyard.

On August 29, three workers were seen cleaning a swank elevator outside the eight-storey MMRDA building at Bandra-Kurla Complex without any safety gear.

Many officials, including additional commissioner of police (western region) Vishwas Nangare Patil, were on the sixth floor where metropolitan commissioner Rahul Asthana and his deputies SVR Srinivas and Ashwini Bhide were conducting marathon meetings.

In the afternoon, even as the meetings were on, three labourers quietly got out of the windows of the main room on the sixth floor and climbed on to scaffolding covering a swank tube lift to clean it.

One of the labourers, who identified himself only as Aalam told DNA that the contractor who was in charge of elevator maintenance had not provided them with the safety gear.

They continued to clean the glass lift using detergent —making the already wet bamboos even more slippery — and no one noticed them.

“They were inviting trouble,” said a visitor at the MMRDA headquarter who did not want to be identified.

While a staff member tried to defend the agency by claiming that the workers had safety harnesses, but do not wear it, another employee shouted at the labourers asking them to wear the safety equipment. 

“We do not have any,” Aalam shouted back. After 45 minutes they finished their gravity-defying job.

MMRDA spokesperson Dilip Kawathkar agreed that it was extremely risky to let the labourers on the scaffolding without security gear and assured that the contractor would be taken to task.