Worker dies, 3 injured in work site cave-in: Probe ordered, PMC draws up safety guidelines

Indian Express

5 hours ago

A day after a worker died and three others were injured after debris fell on them while carrying out drainage work near Nanded city township, the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) swung into action to prepare safety guidelines.
'We visited the site on Tuesday and ordered a detailed inquiry,' said additional municipal commissioner Prithviraj B P, who along with the municipal commissioner visited the site. 'We have decided three things for now, which include safety guidelines at project sites. Training will be given to workers to ensure there is no repeat of such incidents,' he said.
Work at the accident site has been stopped for now, he said. 'A team from Japan International Cooperative Agency (JICA) will visit the site and till then work at the site will not be restarted. However, work on the project at other sites will continue after ensuring safety guidelines are followed,' he added.
'We will ensure the main contractor provides compensation to the workers who died and were injured,' he said.
The River Improvement Project, also known as JICA project, involves construction of 11 new Sewage Treatment Plants (STPs) and laying drainage pipelines to ensure no untreated sewage is released in Mula and Mutha river. The project implementation has been delayed for long and failed to meets its March 2025 deadline. The project got delayed due to technical issues but finally it is on track. The project cost has increased from Rs 990 crore to Rs 1,173 crore and an additional Rs 250 crore for its operation and maintenance for the next 15 years.
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