Staff Correspondent
Port Blair, Jun 4: In an unfortunate accident today morning at about 9:00 hrs one of the Permanent Mazdoors of the Electricity Department Mr. Lakshman aged about 55 years posted in Dairy Farm site office fell from a transformer pole while fixing the problem of power leakage from the transmission lines at Vijay Baugh.
Mr. Laxshman sustained minor injuries and is under treatment in G.B Pant Hospital’s Orthopaedic Ward. The doctors today performed initial diagnosis and informed that the he has injury in his hip bone. He is set for another diagnosis round of X-ray tomorrow morning.
This incident has once again highlighted one shocking fact that in many cases the Mazdoors are made to do the work of Linemen. In this case also the Mazdoor, Mr. Lakshman was asked to do the job of line man even when there are 6-7 linemen posted in the site office, Dairy Farm. In many cases permanent linemen do not do work, giving excuse of their old age, which results in victimizing of the poor Mazdoors, who has to follow orders of senior to save their job.
Eye witnesses told Andaman Sheekha that Mr. Laxshman was working on a line and suddenly someone charged the line. Lakshman suffered burn injuries due to high voltage shock and he fell like a rock. Earlier in many occasions Mazdoors and linemen have died because of this negligence.
It is very shameful on the part of the electricity department that a mazdoor works as a line man without having proper training to work on transmission lines and without any safety gears. The Administration should look into the matter and provide all kind of assistance to Mr. Laxshman so that he recovers soon from these burn injuries. There is also a need to conduct a thorough inquiry in this matter and punish those, for whom this poor Mazdoor suffered such injuries, which could have killed him.
Meanwhile, Mr. Anand Bihari, the Executive Engineer (HQ) was not available to comment in this issue.
