Officials identified the three workers as Lakhan Ghavare, 32, Sahebrao Girsethe, 35, and Datta Onale, 32. (File photo)
Three labourers died after inhaling ”poisonous fumes” from a roadside optical fibre chamber in the Nigdi area of Pimpri-Chinchwad around 3 pm on Independence Day. However, BSNL and contractors who employed them said they had not asked the labourers to repair any fault in the optical fibre chamber.
The chamber was filled with sewage when the labourers entered it around 3 pm. After one of them entered the chamber, he felt dizzy. Two others immediately jumped in. However, they too felt uneasy and collapsed, PCMC fire officials said.
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”There was no fault in the optical fibre chamber in Nigdi. And therefore we had not asked the contractors to get any fault repaired in that particular chamber,” BSNL Assistant General Manager Bharat Sonawane told The Indian Express.
After the incident, BSNL officials said that they had immediately got in touch with the contractors of Nigdi. ”The contractors told us that they had not asked any labourers to go to the spot and carry out any repair work,” Sonawane said.
To complicate matters further, BSNL officials said that all the three labourers belonged to three different contractors. ”When we award a contract of any particular, it is given to one particular contractor. In this case, the three labourers belonged to three different contractors which took us by surprise. We are also trying to find out how this happened. As of now, we too have no clue,” Sonawane said.
Sonawane said from 2009 to 2021, this particular chamber had not reported any fault and therefore it was never opened. ”From 2021 to 2015, whether it was opened or not, I have no idea as I was posted elsewhere. In any case, after the chamber is opened, the labourers do not enter it immediately. They sit out for half an hour before entering it. All the labourers are given proper training on how to handle the chambers,” he said.
Ramesh Patil, one of the BSNL contractors, said,”Of the three labourers, one of them worked with me. Yesterday was Independence Day and therefore had given holiday to all labourers. I too do not know how the labourer who worked for me reached there. The fourth labourer who did not enter the chamber said they were called to the spot by one of the labourers who died. If BSNL has any work, they always put the information on the official group. In this case, no such thing happened. Yet the labourers went to the spot. We have no idea about this.”
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Mahesh Bansode, senior police inspector, said,”In all, there were four labourers who went to the spot. Three died. We inquired with the fourth one who told us that they went as one of them had asked them to come to the spot…We are investigating the matter.”
BSNL officials said they would be sending a report to their headquarters.
Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Commissioner Shekhar Singh, said, ”One of the workers first entered the optical fibre chamber to carry out some work. He felt uneasy and sought help. After that the other two workers also entered the chamber. They felt uneasy and collapsed.”
The PCMC commissioner said the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) had no connection with the incident as the optical fibre work was related to the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited. ”Some misinformation is being spread that the labourers were employed with PCMC for clearing sewage chambers. That’s not true. The labourers did not work for PCMC. Similarly, PCMC does all sewage and drainage chambers clearance through automatic machinery. No labourer, be it permanent or contractual, is allowed to enter drainage chambers. Such things are not allowed under the Anti-Manual Scavenging Act. And therefore PCMC proudly state that we do not allow manual cleaning of sewage or drainage chambers.”
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Anil Dimble, an PCMC fire official, said, ”As soon as we got the information, we rushed to the site. We pulled out all the three workers from the chamber. While two of them seemed to have died after inhaling the poisonous fumes in the chamber, the third one looked unconscious. We gave CPR to all three. They were then taken to Lokmanya Hospital, where they were declared dead.”
Officials identified the three workers as Lakhan Ghavare, 32, Sahebrao Girsethe, 35, and Datta Honale 32.
When contacted, Dr Shrikrishna Joshi, a spokesperson for Lokmanya Hospital, said, ”All the three were brought dead to the hospital. The bodies have been sent for postmortem.”
Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades.
Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives.
Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees.
During Covid, over 50 doctors were asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa.
Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died.
Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More
