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Railway responsible

Sealed 600ft deep tube well left open by its contractor two years back

M Abul Kalam Azad
The tragedy was to befall someone. The authorities through their sheer negligence and lack of monitoring were in fact inviting it for the last two years.
The tragic death of four-year-old Jihad who fell into an abandoned and unsealed deep well on Friday afternoon has laid bare it all.
The blame lies with the railway authorities.
SR House, a private company assigned to bore a new well beside the abandoned one, is to be equally blamed. The company allegedly broke the steel lid of the abandoned pipe for using water, leading to Friday's incident. But it is the carelessness of the
railway officials that allowed SR House to commit the offence.
The deep tube well in question was sealed when it was declared abandoned at the end of 2012. The railway authorities decided to drill a new well a few metres from the old ones for a smooth water supply to the nearby railway colony and the Kamalapur Railway Station.
SR House removed the lid of the tube well early last year as drilling a new one required water, and left the old one unprotected, said railway sources.
The company did not bother to put up a sign there to warn of the danger the unsealed pipe posed. There is also a kitchen market nearby.
Locals said the company sometimes put a stone or polythene sheet over the opening of the pipe to cover it.
According to railway officials, the company installed a 650-feet tube well in May this year but it could not use that due to some technical problems. The company then started drilling another tube well there but
kept using the abandoned one for water.
Locals alleged that on Thursday another boy was about to fall into the abandoned well. "He was pulled out since he was sticking to the top of the pipe," said Mirazul Islam, a resident of the area.
Surprisingly, railway officials did not notice the unprotected well even in two years. Now they are shifting the
blame on the company, saying SR House did not inform them of unsealing the pipe. They did not even seek permission before doing so, the officials added.
"A sealed pipe is not supposed to be opened but the company did it for collecting water," said Engineer Riad Hasan Khan of railway's Bridge Engineering Department, which is responsible for monitoring their
work.
He claimed that the matter was not brought to their notice.
Division Engineer-3 of Dhaka Division Hamidur Rahman said the abandoned pipe was sealed early last year but the company broke the seal for water. He could not also say how the pipe remained unprotected for such a longtime.
"The truth is the abandoned pipe
never came to the notice of the officials concerned. Rather they were concerned with the new tube well," admitted a senior railway official, requesting anonymity.
Preferring anonymity, another railway official told The Daily Star that the lid of the abandoned well was stolen quite a long ago. He, however, could not say who had stolen the lid.
Senior sub-assistant engineer of
Bangladesh Railway Jahangir Alam was suspended for negligence of duty while the firm was blacklisted. Locals demanded all the railway officials be held responsible for their negligence.
Officials and workers of SR House went into hiding after the incident.
A large number of the capital's manhole remains uncovered, putting pedestrians at constant risk of losing life or limbs.