Negligence on safety blamed for crane mishap

Visakhapatnam: A number of lapses led to the overturning of crane near the overhead pipeline main road junction close to Naval Dockyard in the early hours of Thursday.

The incident happened at the junction where the Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL) work is in progress.

Traffic came to a standstill on Thursday morning after a huge crane overturned on the road. As a result, commuters had to wait till the road was cleared.

Meanwhile, alternative routes were taken to reach destinations as the service road got blocked in the area due to the accident. IOCL personnel launched relief measures to clear traffic. Fortunately, no one was injured and there was no casualty.

Two more heavy cranes reached the spot to take up rescue operations. The work continued for about four and a half hours to clear to resume the situation back to normal.

Traffic was restored along the route after 1 pm on Thursday.

Along with dockyard, employees and workers working in other organisations travel that way to attend duties.

Briefing the reason for the crane mishap, Visakhapatnam Heavy Crane Owner’s Association members pointed out that the incident was a result of negligence by the contractor and the safety officers of the IOCL were responsible for it. “There was no safety officer present at the incident spot.

The accident occurred as the work was carried out by the crane beyond its capacity. The contractor, who was not present onsite, was overseeing the work remotely from Maharashtra and had engaged an inexperienced local supervisor,” said V Chandrasekhar, secretary of the association.

Work was done with insufficient and unqualified staff and there was no signal man available and no focus lights were installed at the job site, Chandrasekhar informed.

Despite severe weather warnings, the IOCL contractor hastily executed the operation when it was raining heavily which led to the mishap.

This negligence resulted in significant damage to the crane, causing a heavy financial loss to the owner, he pointed out.

The association members demanded facts need to be exposed as the incident was preventable.