GHAZIABAD: Four engineers of the UP Jal Nigam were suspended on Tuesday on charges of dereliction of duty that allegedly resulted in the deaths of three workers in the sewer tank of an STP pumping station in Loni on July 8. The suspension orders were issued from Lucknow after a departmental inquiry was conducted in Ghaziabad.The GDA had recommended strict action against six engineers of the Jal Nigam for their failure to keep vigil on maintenance and operations of the pumping station that was being undertaken by a private contractor.On July 8, two workers at the pumping station, Roshan Lal (45) and Mahesh (28), died after inhaling toxic gases inside the tank into which they had descended to clean solid waste. A third person, Bulbul (26), who lived in a locality near the pumping station, also died in his efforts to retrieve the two workers from the tank.Jal Nigam officials said assistant engineers Rameshwar Dayal and Anil Verma along with junior engineers Kapil Kumar and Sant Ram were suspended after orders were issued from the headquarters in Lucknow.“We were not privy to the probe report compiled by the district administration. The private contractor who was in charge of maintenance and operations of the pumping station has not been blacklisted yet. Compensation of Rs 10 lakh each has been paid to the families of all three victims,” Jal Nigam chief engineer Gaya Prasad Shukla told TOI.According to the Jal Nigam, the compensation has been paid by recovering the amounts from the contractor in charge of the pumping station. An FIR was registered with Loni police station for causing death due to negligence against the private contractor to which provisions of Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers & Their Rehabilitation Act, 2013 had been added later.“The autopsy reports of the three victims established suffocation as the cause of death. We are yet to make any arrests in the case. The owner of the private contractor firm, Rakesh Tomar, is at large and has been declared as wanted,” said Loni police station SHO Umesh Kumar.

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