Body of Bangladesh accident victim sent home

PETALING JAYA: The body of the 40-year-old Bangladeshi worker who died in a mishap last Friday at the Semantan Portal Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) would have been sent back to his homeland today.
In a statement on Saturday, MRT Strategic Communications Director Amir Mahmood Razak said that they had made arrangements to send Rijaul Abdul Goni's body back today, and was facilitating things with the Bangladesh High Commission in Kuala Lumpur by providing the necessary information relating to the accident.
However, he denied certain media reports which claimed that Rijaul’s body had been crushed.
“An early report shows that the deceased’s body is still intact, but we have to wait for the autopsy report to determine the cause of death,” he said.
An autopsy was conducted on the body last Friday at Kuala Lumpur Hospital but the autopsy report has not been released yet.
Meanwhile, 37-year-old Shanaullah who sustained face injuries in the same incident has undergone surgery on his nose and is currently in a stable condition.
In a separate statement, the company refuted Kuala Lumpur Fire and Rescue Department’s assistant operations director Azizan Ismail’s claim that the department was notified about the incident only much later.
Azizan was quoted by an online news portal saying how he was puzzled as to why MRT Corp did not alert the officials earlier.
“MRT Corp would like to refute this statement because the contractor for that site, Sunway Construction Sdn Bhd, made a call to the Emergency Line 999 at 1.38pm, which was approximately 18 minutes after the incident happened.
“Records show that Sunway Construction’s site engineer on duty, Syed Asyraf Syed Yahya, made a 999 call at 1.38 pm. Personnel from the Civil Defence Department arrived at the scene approximately 15 minutes later and gave first aid to survivors. In addition, they evacuated those who were involved in the incident and helped send them to hospital,” said Amir.
Therefore, he said it is clear that MRT Corp and the contractor of the work package where the incident occurred, adhered strictly to the Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) which was to notify the authorities immediately after any accident had occurred.
In the incident on Feb 27, workers were assembling the steel cage when the binding that held the steel bars snapped, causing it to collapse on the workers.
Rijaul died on the spot, while Shanaullah was injured and another worker escaped unharmed.
This is not the first time such an incident has occurred at MRT sites. In a previous incident, three workers passed away in an accident near Kota Damansara last August.