MUMBAI: Indian investigators were on Friday probing the deaths of six construction workers who were killed when the bamboo scaffolding on which they were working collapsed.
The six plunged to their deaths from the eighth floor of a newly constructed 14-storey building in the north Mumbai suburb of Bhayander on Thursday afternoon. Three other workers were injured.
The scaffolding had been erected while the building was being painted.
Bamboo is frequently used as scaffolding in India and elsewhere in Asia. It is seen as a cheaper, versatile alternative to more expensive metal, as it can easily be cut to size and transported.
Construction workers -- many of them poor, unskilled migrant workers who are hired on a daily basis -- can be seen balanced at great heights, barefoot and without basic safety equipment.
Civic officials who inspected the site of Thursday's accident told Indian newspapers that the bamboo was of poor quality and buckled under the weight of 14 workers, all of them labourers from the south of the country.
"The workers were not given helmets or harnesses," a senior local authority official, Sudhir Raut, was quoted as saying by the Mumbai Mirror newspaper.
"Bamboo used in poles was of inferior quality and ropes too were not strong enough to withstand the weight of so many people," he added.
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