Six fall to death as ropes of a trolley lift break in Karachi's Boat Basin area

Labourers fall to ground from the 11th floor of an under-construction building

KARACHI: As many as six workers died as a trolley lift collapsed and workers fell from the 11th floor of a building under construction in Boat Basin area on Saturday. The workers were cutting and fixing the glass windows when the rope of one side of the trolley lift broke down. Police have taken into custody the contractor to whom the task had been assigned.

According to rescue workers, six workers were fixing windows of a 23-story building near Bilawal Chowrangi at 10 am on Saturday morning when the unfortunate incident took place. People gathered on the spot as they witnessed the dreadful scene. Police and rescue teams immediately reached the scene.



The SHO of the area, Ashfaq Ahmed, said that five of the labourers died on the spot while one was taken to the hospital where he succumbed to his injuries. He said that the dead bodies were taken to the Civil Hospital and Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC) where the deceased was identified as 30-year-old Nasir, 30-year-old Masab, 28-year-old Asad, 25-year-old Faisal, 31-year-old Riaz, and 25-year-old Abdur Rehman. According to Ahmed, the bodies were handed over to the relatives after the medico-legal formalities and post mortem.

He also said that the deceased was working on this building for the contractor for the past nine months. He said that among the deceased, three of them belonged to Korangi, two belonged to Mauripur and one was from Shireen Jinnah Colony.

The owner of the building had handed over the work of installing windows to a company. The work of cutting and fixing the windows was sub-contracted to Irfan, who has been taken into custody. Ahmed said that the police have gathered all the evidence including the fallen trolley lift parts and the case was being investigated from all angles.



SHO Ahmed said that a case has not been registered by the families of the deceased yet. "If a case was not registered by them, then the Boat Basin Police will file a case on behalf of the state," he said.

Meanwhile, the Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah has taken notice of the incident and has directed the Karachi commissioner to conduct an inquiry into the incident and present a report so that those responsible could be identified.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 10^th, 2019.