Govt to give Tk5 lakh compensation for death involving metro rail

Bangla Press Desk:   The government would give Tk5 lakh as compensation to the family of the man who died on Sunday afternoon when a bearing pad fell to the ground from the Farmgate metro rail station.

The government would also give job to an unemployed family member of the deceased at the Dhaka Mass Transit Company Limited (DMTCL), which is the operating company of the metro rail.

Road Transport and Bridges Adviser Fouzul Kabir Khan announced the compensations when visiting the site of accident at Farmgate around 2:30pm.

The adviser also said that a five-member committee, headed by Bridges Division Secretary Mohammad Abdur Rouf, would submit a probe report on the accident within two weeks.

Earlier, police identified the deceased as Abul Kalam from Naria upazila of Shariatpur. Two others were injured in the accident, which prompted an immediate and indefinite suspension of metro rail operations.

Iftikhar Hossain, general manager at DMTCL, told reporters that the train services were suspended promptly. He could not confirm when the services would resume.

This would be the second time in about a year that a bearing pad, weighing around 140 kilograms, has fallen down to the ground from the Farmgate metro rail station. After the first incident in September last year, train services were halted for 11 hours, but no casualties took place.

At the time, Mohammad Abdur Rouf, the then managing director of DMTCL, told reporters that the current design lacks a way to hold the bearing pads in place.

It is worth noting that bearing pads are installed between viaducts and a pillar on elevated transportation structures to help absorb the weight of incoming vehicles.

BP/SP