Rs 25L ex gratia for families of 6 still missing workers: Ponguleti
Around 750 rescuers from various agencies had worked hard round the clock to search for the missing workers
Hyderabad: The Telangana government on Wednesday moved one step closer to officially declaring that the six more missing workers in the SLBC tunnel in Nagarkurnool district of Telangana as dead, with revenue minister Ponguleti Srinivas Reddy announcing that ex gratia of `25 lakh each would be paid to their families in the next day or two.
It may be recalled that eight workers were buried when a section of the tunnel collapsed on February 22. While bodies of two of the workers have been found in the past 40 days, efforts to find the rest of the six have not met with success so far.
The body of Gurpreeet Singh, an erector operation working for Robbins, USA, that operated the tunnel boring machine was found on March 9 and that of Manoj Kumar, a project engineer with Jaiprakash Associates, the company contracted to build the tunnel, was found on March 25 and the families were provided with `25 lakh as ex gratia.
Srinivas Reddy, speaking to media persons at the Srisailam Left Bank Canal (SLBC) inlet site in Domalapenta village after taking stock of the efforts to search for the missing bodies, said it was extremely unfortunate that lives were lost in the accident and everything humanly possible was done to search for possible survivors in the immediate aftermath of the accident.
Expressing deep sympathies to the families of the workers who lost their lives, he said the Nagarkurnool district collector Badavath Santosh has been instructed to release the ex gratia to the families of the six workers whose bodies are yet to be found.
The minister also said that the government was committed to complete the SLBC tunnel project but would move forward with abundant caution after taking into account all aspects of safety. “We will surmount any challenges and difficulties and this government will complete the project in the current term of the Congress government, in the next two to two and a half years and provide irrigation and drinking water to Nalgonda and Khammam districts by drawing water from Krishna reservoir using the tunnel,” Srinivas Reddy said.
He said over the past 40 days, around 750 rescuers from various agencies had worked hard round the clock to search for the missing workers. The number of rescue workers has now been reduced to around 550 who will continue to clean up the tunnel removing silt and parts of the tunnel boring machine as the search continues for the bodies of the still missing six workers, he said.
Officials said they were still hopeful of finding the body of at least one more missing person in the silt and debris but the cutting and removal of parts of the tunnel boring machine were proving to be a time-consuming task before the silt can be dug in an effort to find the bodies. While Wednesday’s announcement of ex gratia payment all but makes it official that there are no survivors in the tunnel accident, a formal official declaration of the same is expected to come only once a long bureaucratic process is fulfilled.
For this to happen, the families still waiting for the bodies of their loved ones, need to file missing persons complaints, following which officials are expected to take a month to search for them and then declare their efforts have not succeeded, among other steps.