Iniobong Sunday
One person along Urua Ekpa community in Itu Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom State was at the weekend died at the collapsed construction site.
One Marvelous, a construction worker, was allegedly buried at the site of the underground drainage system constructed by Benest Engineering Ltd, forcing some residents of the community to have mobilized a mass protest against the sad incident.
Straightnews gathered that human error coupled with the poor rescue operation, caused the death as the youths were said to have manually worked with shovels at the site, since the company could not immediately bring an excavator.
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Speaking to our correspondent, Mfon Udoh, a resident of the area, who said he personally assisted in the rescue operation, lamented “the victim could have been rescued alive, but for lack of earth-moving equipment like excavator, which forced us to join in digging the spot for over four hours to get at his remains, heavily pressed down in the rubble.”
Udoh explained that “the structure collapsed under the weight and vibration of motorized equipment that was packing and ferrying the chirping stones closer to the underground, where the victim, a mason man, was trapped, while he was trying to pour the cement and concrete mixture in the construction of the underground water tunnel.”
He lamented that “a job of this magnitude could be awarded to a local contractor as a political compensation to the firm owned by Elder Benji Udobia, the political leader of Esit Eket Local Government Area”, and urged governor Udom Emmanuel, cancel the contract and re-award it to major company with excellent safety standards like the Julius Berger, as his tenure nears its May 29, 2023 exit date.
“We have been cut off from Uyo, the state capital because of perennial floods that submerged houses and caused people to lose their lives every rainy season. So, when we saw contractors being mobilized to the site, we commended the governor for this rescue mission, but it turned out to be a big disaster to the people,” Effiong Bassey, a youths’ activist from the Itu, recounted.
Our correspondent Saturday learned that the contractor has abandoned the job, following threat by the angry youths to protest against alleged neglect leading to the sad incident.
“Since the accident happened, the contractor has disappeared with their equipment from the site. And from the look of things, the job has been abandoned because the administration is already getting closer to its end of tenure in 2023,” Emmanuel Akpan, a resident, said.
