Lucknow municipal corporation staff stuck in LDA apartment lift, rescued

An LMC worker was stuck in a lift at an LDA apartment in Lucknow while collecting garbage fees, marking the fourth such incident this year.

A Lucknow Municipal Corporation (LMC) worker was stuck inside a lift at the Lucknow Development Authority’s (LDA) Sargam Apartment in Jankipuram area of Lucknow on Sunday morning.

Lucknow municipal corporation staff stuck in LDA apartment lift, rescued (sourced)

This was the second incident in a fortnight of a person getting stuck inside a lift in the state capital and the fourth one since January.

The LMC employee, Toofani Ram, had come to LDA apartment to collect garbage-disposal charges from residents. After collecting the fee from residents of P block, the LMC employee took the lift to make his way back from the 16th floor and found himself stuck on the 11th floor.

“I waited for five minutes. The Alarm was not working and there was network issue as well. I thought that the issue would get resolved on its own. However, when nothing happened, I screamed for help. Fortunately, at this point my phone’s network was restored so I called up the resident welfare association’s (RWA) president who rushed a maintenance guy. This person took guidance from the maintenance electrician on video and got me out in 30 minutes,” said Toofani.

Apartment’s RWA president Amit Sinha said: “Such glitches occur sometimes but lifts are now in a better situation than before. We don’t know why this happened. Most maintenance staff are on leave due to Sunday else the LMC guy could have been rescued earlier.”

Vivek Sharma, resident of nearby Smriti Apartment said that the condition of lifts was bad in almost all LDA apartments. “People getting stuck inside a lift is now common. These things happen due to lack of proper maintenance, backup and poor equipment quality. LDA officials hardly pay any heed,” he said.

The apartment building where the LMC employee got stuck is part of Jankipuram extension project, whose construction began in 2009. Residents said some of the construction work is still left. An RWA was finally formed by LDA last year after which the annual maintenance contract of the lifts was given to a private firm.

Manoj Sagar, executive engineer, LDA, said that instructions are regularly issued to the firm tasked with lift maintenance to do their job properly.