Ahead of Durgapur Utsav, a cha

Employment

Ahead of Durgapur Utsav, a charred December salutation to 6 labourers in Durgapur

The industrial city greeted December today with as many as six labourers struggling for life after they suffered critical burn injuries in separate two hazardous unsafe factories in Durgapur today.

The industrial city, meanwhile, has geared up to organise 'Durgapur Utsav' - a mega cultural festival with cheerful leaders, delighted business houses paying serious attention to festivities more with lesser concern for workmen's safety and life, these days however!

The injured marginal factory labourers were shifted to two hospitals shortly after the incidents by their fellow members. The incidents mocked at the city's 'dull' motion for festivals and braved eventually to expose - how the authorities maintain absolute indifference in matters linked to the safety and security at the workplaces and how the workers are forced to shoulder their jobs in severe hazardous conditions flouting the norms set by country's Labour Laws and that too within the district of state Labour Minister.

At the Blast Furnace site of SAIL's Durgapur Steel Plant, two contractual labourers, identified as Sheikh Imran Ali and Sheikh Rajjak Ali and a permanent worker of the plant Barid Baran Ghosh were assigned to fix a valve using one gas operated welding machine. They suffered severe burn injuries on their faces, chest and hands as they didn't have safety gears and the feeder pipe fitted to one industrial cylinder pressed for valve welding suddenly had leaked in flames. The grievously injured contractor labourers were from Amrai village close to the DSP factory.

The cylinder, according to one DSP official, was loaded with Oxygen and highly inflammable Acetylene gas. The charred labourers were shifted to the Main Hospital of the Durgapur Steel Plant.

Animesh Pramanik, Inspector of Factories, Durgapur also expressed disgust with the successive mishaps and said: "In past few years, we have registered so many cases of safety compromise in these hazardous plants and a good number of prosecutions were made."

Earlier, in the morning, three contractual labourers - Abhijit Bhuin, Ujjawal Mukherjee and Mrinal Roy suffered grave burn wounds while they were engaged to dismantle the iron structures of one of it's defuncted units by a private owned Graphite electrode manufacturing company at Sagarbhanga locality here.

The labourers fell on a boiling bed of bituminous liquid. They, according to Sidhhartha Bose, Citu district secretariat member, West Burdwan, were dismantling the old iron structures using gas-cutters. The site was filled with frozen tar that started boiling due to high temperature of the gas cutter deployment.

Bose alleged: "The factory management has always remained indifferent in matters of workmen's safety. Barely a few days ago, one labourer had suffered critical injuries in the same plant." He added: "This entire factory is a death trap for the labourers." Manas Adhikari, Inttuc's Core Committee member in the district also rushed to the plant and said: "We have demanded adequate safety arrangements for the labourers before they are assigned to the hazardous zones."