Kin blame contractor’s apathy for death of crane operator

The relatives and co-workers of the deceased Sarathkumar on Sunday held a protest at the Royapettah Hospital demanding action against the contractors, for not lacking enough safety precautions for the workers involved in the demolition of the fire-ravaged concrete structure besides demanding compensation from the government. 

They later received the body after post-mortem after the cops assured that talks would be held regarding the compensation. 

“While contractors were thoughtful about the safety of people living close to the building and asked them to evacuate to avoid any untoward incident, they turned a blind eye to the safety of workers deployed to bring down the building. 

And the way the building was demolished was too risky for operators,” said Sivakumar, uncle of deceased Sarathkumar. While Chennai Silks’ owners have announced a compensation of Rs 5 lakh to Sarathkumar’s family, Sivakumar is angry that the contractors didn’t even condole the death of one of their workers. 

“The contractors forced operators to work overtime without any precaution to meet the government’s deadline. Government too, has not said anything about the mishap just because it has handed over the job to private players, which is unfair. We have been told that there won’t be any solatium from government, while a representative of the contractors has told the family that compensation will be provided from insurance claimed,” Sivakumar said.  

However, Peer Mohammed of Parveen Travels, the main contractor, said that the death of Sarathkumar was unexpected and unfortunate and refuted that workers were made operate without safety measures. He also said that demolition process would resume from Monday.