E-Paper
Soil collapse incident: NHAI bars private firm from work
The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has barred a private contractor from carrying out further work at the site where a 22-year-old worker was killed
The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has barred a private contractor from carrying out further work at the site where a 22-year-old worker was killed and two others injured after a mound of soil collapsed on them. The workers were laying and shifting pipelines for the Ganga water supply as part of the Delhi-Meerut Expressway (DME) project.
The NHAI officials said the pipline work is taken up by three private firms hired by the main contractor company that is constructing Phase 2 of DME. The incident on Monday afternoon took place near Columbia Asia Hospital adjacent to NH-9.
“The contractor has been barred from taking up the work and a safety audit report is awaited after inspections on Tuesday. We will review whether the contractor firm should be allowed to resume work or not. The issue of non-availability of safety equipment at the site has been brought to our knowledge,” RP Singh, project director of NHAI, said.
“Prima facie, we suspect that the soil had become loose as water seeped in from a nearby habitation. Further, some worker also pulled down the shuttering. All this led to the tragedy. The safety audit will tell us the exact reasons behind the incident,” he said.
The workers at the site complained that no safety equipment was provided to them at work.
“The workers did not even have helmets to protect themselves while working in the trench. The men buried under the soil were taken out with the help of earthmovers after a lapse of about 30-45 minutes,” Abdul Hasan, a worker from Muzaffarpur in Bihar, said.
Other workers, too, had similar complaints and said that they were brought to the site from their villages by labour contractors.
“Generally, workers here are from eastern UP and Bihar. Local contractors in these areas bring us here. We get paid ₹400-500 a day and we live in tents nearby. I, too, was buried in the soil collapse, but luckily, I escaped. The worker who died was the one to be pulled out last,” Umesh Kumar, another worker, from Etawah, said.
The Phase 2 of DME spans a distance of 19.2km from UP Gate to Dasna. The pipeline work involves shifting of existing Ganga water lines out of the way of the under construction highway and also for laying of new pipelines.
The pipelines from Upper Ganga Canal reach to water treatment plants at Pratap Vihar from where treated Ganga water is supplied to Ghaziabad and Noida.
