Manhole death: GHMC suspends 2 engineers

Hyderabad: Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) on Monday suspended two engineers for alleged negligence of duty after an elderly person lost his life after slipping into an under-construction manhole at Himayathnagar.

The civic body has also ordered a detailed probe into the mishap in which one Hemanth Kumar Sahay, 66, fell into the manhole on Saturday last and died.

“The preliminary report shows that there was some kind of negligence as the manhole was open. As of now, we cannot say that the engineer is at fault or not,” GHMC Commissioner Somesh Kumar said.

“We want to give a clear message to everybody that such kind of negligence either by the contractor, engineer or anyone else is not acceptable,” he said.

All the precautions have to be taken during a work and if precautions were not taken then action would be very serious, he said adding two GHMC engineers, an assistant engineer and deputy executive engineer have been suspended.

“We have asked for a detailed inquiry and based on it we will take further action. The incident is under investigation. The manhole was under construction. What is being told is that some stones and barricades were put near the manhole which was removed by someone resulting in this incident,” Somesh Kumar said.