Family of 23-year-old Mehul Mehda, the sanitation worker who died of asphyxiation Tuesday while cleaning a sewer in Rajkot, accepted his body Thursday after the Rajkot Municipal Corporation (RMC) assured them of of monetary compensation and housing facilities. The family refused to claim his body Wednesday, demanding job to one of his family members and housing facilities to them. Mehda and RMC contractor Afzal Fufar (43) died while cleaning a choked drainage line opposite the gate of the Gokuldham Society on Samrat Main Road on Tuesday evening. Family members of Fufar, who had the contract for cleaning drains in the area, claimed his body Tuesday evening itself. However, relatives of Mehda refused to claim his body, saying he was the only earning member of the family comprising his live-in partner and widowed mother. Despite persuasion from police, they continued their protests on Thursday and threatened that they would take the body to the RMC headquarters on Dhebar Road. They accepted the body in the afternoon after Rajkot mayor Pradip Dav, RMC standing committee chairman Pushkar Patel and other officials meet his relatives and community leaders, and accepted some of their demands. “The meeting decided that they will be paid ex gratia compensation with an upper limit of Rs10 lakh. Their other demand was that they should be provided a house and we told them that we shall work towards that with a positive attitude.,” Rajkot mayor Pradip Dav told media persons. Rajkot municipal commissioner Amit Arora said that the civic body agreed to pay ex gratia to the kin of the worker given the unprecedented situation. “He was not an employee of the RMC but a worker engaged by an RMC contractor. However, since the contractor himself was killed in the same incident, RMC has decided to pay ex gratia. We shall allot his kin a house if government guidelines permit,” Arora told The Indian Express. The incident took place around 5.30 pm Tuesday when Mehda fell into the manhole accidentally, the commissioner said. “While other workers were operating jetting machines, Mehda opened the lid of a nearby manhole from which some fumes emanated. Mehda was affected by the fumes and he fell into the manhole. In an attempt to save Mehda, the contractor jumped in but he also died of asphyxiation,” he added.
