By IANS,
Dubai : An Indian worker was buried alive and two were injured in a construction site mishap in Bahrain, media reports said Sunday.
M. Devendra, 27, was laying water pipes, along with two other Indian workers, in a nine-foot-deep trench at a construction site in the Salmabad area in the heart of Bahrain when the wall around them collapsed Saturday.
Devendra, who hails from Andhra Pradesh in south India, had died by the time he was pulled out from the site 15 minutes later. The other two workers, M. Gangayya and Bala Lingam, escaped with minor injuries.
“Devendra was completely buried in sand and when a team of firemen hoisted him out of the trench he was declared dead at the scene,” the Gulf Daily News quoted an informed source as saying.
“The remaining two, Gangayya and Bala Lingam, were in a state of shock but only suffered minor injuries,” the source added.
All three were reportedly employed by the Ahmed Mansoor Al A’ali Company. Authorities rushed to the accident site and have launched a probe into the incident.
Labour Ministry occupational health and safety head Ali Abdulla Makki told the newspaper that certain safety measures were not in place at the construction site.
“When work takes place in a trench, metal plates are required to be fixed around the opening, but this was missing here,” he said.
This is the second such incident in Bahrain within a span of three days where an Indian has lost his life.
Last Thursday, 33-year-old U. Sajeevan was crushed to death when a heavy steel sheet fell on him at a construction site mishap.
Sajeevan, a steel fabricator, was killed instantly when the steel sheet, which was being lifted by a pulley, fell on him at a construction site in Hidd on the island of Muharraq.