The Hindu : New Delhi News : Judicial inquiry demanded

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Dec 30, 2005

New Delhi

New Delhi

Judicial inquiry demanded

Staff Reporter

Jasola tragedy in which a dozen labourers were buried alive

NEW DELHI: Rashtriya Shramik Congress (RSC) president Sukhbir Sharma has demanded a judicial inquiry by a High Court judge into the Jasola tragedy in which a dozen labourers were buried alive when a huge heap of earth fell on them at the under-construction shopping mall site in South Delhi on December 24.

Mr. Sharma held the building owner responsible for the mishap and demanded a Central Bureau of Investigation inquiry into the case. "Eleven of the labourers killed at the under-construction site were from Malda in West Bengal and they were hired without following the labour laws, which make it mandatory for the building contractors to get the labourers registered at their native labour offices before taking them to the other State. They are also supposed to pay half their salaries there and then," he said.

Mr. Sharma said the building owner and the contractors did not follow safety norms as per the set rules. "The basement was dug at a 90 degree angle and there was no barricading to prevent earth from caving in, nor they had made proper arrangements for medical assistance in case any labourer got injured," he alleged.

According to Mr. Sharma, the rescue teams did not have proper gadgets to ensure safety of the trapped labourers while pulling them out of the earth. "They instead used earth excavators that tore apart their body parts," said Mr. Sharma, who witnessed the entire exercise this past Saturday.

Further, he said such incidents had become common all over the country and builders and contractors were openly flouting the labour laws. According to him, as per the existing rules, the builders are supposed to give 1 per cent of the amount they put in construction work to the Government, from which labourers injured or killed at work sites are paid compensations or pensions.

Mr. Sharma urged the Delhi Government to register the construction workers under the Building and other Construction workers'/Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1996.

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