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| Probe panel holds Gammon responsible for mishap |
| Press Trust Of India / New Delhi Jul 23, 2009, 01:17 IST |
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A probe panel looking into the crane mishap at a Delhi Metro site during debris clearance today held Gammon India, the contractor, responsible, saying “mismanagement and lack of professionalism” from its part resulted in the incident, a claim rejected by the firm.
“We have received the report on the snapping of cranes in Zamrudpur. It holds the contractor’s mismanagement and non-professional approach as the reasons for the mishap,” Delhi Metro chief E Sreedharan told reporters.
DMRC has appointed B P Singh, an expert on cranes and ex-General Manager of NALCO, to inquire into the July 13 mishap.
Sreedharan said Gammon India used four cranes at the same time, which was not the practice. “Two cranes should have been used instead of four. Once you use four and if one of them develops a snag, then everything goes wrong,” he said. “The report also said that the clearance of girder from the site should have been done in two stages. There is a sheer error in judgement. Fortunately, only four cranes were lost but it is a very major incident,” he said, adding Metro was “not very much” involved in debris clearance operations.
Gammon India refuted the allegations and claimed that DMRC was fully aware and involved in the operation and it did not receive any communication from the one-man committee set up by DMRC to investigate the crane mishap.
“Gammon India had recommended cutting down the launching truss into multiple pieces and then remove them individually. This would have taken minimum 2-3 days. However, DMRC officials were in a rush to remove the launching truss as they wanted to open one lane of the road by July 14,” it said.
“Hence, the decision was taken to employ cranes to lift the entire launching truss and most of the cranes were arranged by DMRC. The DMRC engineers were fully aware and involved in the operation,” it said.
It said Gammon India is yet to receive the report and they could not comment on the findings. However, Sreedharan had earlier said all the four cranes were brought from different Metro sites by the contractor and it did not belong to one particular company.
“There was no coordinated action. The crane operators could not coordinate, they spoke different language,” he said.
He also lamented that there was no authority in the country which checks the “health of such equipment.
Sreedharan also said that the contractor should have deployed more experts on cranes at the site. “We do not have experts on cranes though we have a team which looks into the safety aspect,” he said.
Delhi Metro officials said the probe report on the July 11 accident when an under-construction bridge collapsed in Zamrudpur killing six persons is likely to be submitted tomorrow.
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