Dubai, Nov 9 (IANS) At least seven construction workers, including six Indians, were killed and 24 injured when a bridge under construction in the Dubai Marina area collapsed. Authorities blamed a crane operator for the mishap.
The incident occurred Thursday evening when a crane hit the bridge under construction on Sufooh Road, near Jumeirah Marina Mall here, an area marked by high-rise residential and commercial buildings.
According to a source here, six of those killed were from India and one from Pakistan.
“Among the Indians, four were from Tamil Nadu, one from Bihar and another from Uttar Pradesh,” the source told IANS.
Of the 24 injured, who were admitted to the Rashid Hospital here, 20 have been discharged while the other four were stated to be out of danger.
According to an official of the Indian consulate, further details of the victims were still awaited since the bodies were in the police mortuary.
All the workers were employees of the Dubai-headquartered Wade Adams Contracting Company. The company has been operating in the Middle East since 1976 and is currently focussed on the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Bahrain.
“It’s a respectable local company and it has promised compensation to the families of all those deceased,” the Indian mission official said Friday.
Asked about the compensation amount, he said: “It depends upon the company’s rules and the laws here. The amount can range from 35,000 to 50,000 dirhams (Rs.372,941-532,772).”
Describing the cause of the incident, Dubai chief of police Lt. Gen. Dhahi Khalfan Tameim said: “The fault is two-fold: the (crane) driver’s miscalculation of the height of the steel columns, and a lack of site supervision.
“My tentative assumption is that the bridge collapsed because a crane driver had tried to lift a 1.5-tonne load of steel onto the bridge. The load, however, hit against the bridge columns causing it (the bridge) to collapse.”
Stating that workers were present within the columns under construction, the police chief said: “This is a breach of safety practices which dictate that the site be cleared of workers before such a load is brought down.”
Around 40 workers, most of them Indians, were on the bridge when the incident occurred.
Meanwhile, Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) has expressed its sorrow at the incident.
While expressing his condolences to the families of the victims, Mattar Al Tayer, chairman of the board and executive director of RTA, said: “This is a human fault for which the contractor bears full responsibility”.
He added that RTA had set up a committee comprising representatives from RTA, Dubai Police and the Public Prosecutor’s Office to investigate the incident and identify its causes, Emirates news agency WAM reported.
“Such an incident could happen in invariably any country. However, accidents in RTA projects are generally rare,” he said, stressing that RTA applied stringent safety measures and its consultants and contractors were obliged to adhere to safety rules and procedures to avoid accidents.
This Gulf metropolis of 1.4 million people is witnessing a construction boom with many of the workers coming from the Indian subcontinent.