JEDDAH, 29 December 2002 — An expatriate worker was killed in an accident at a construction site in the Al-Ruwais district of Jeddah yesterday evening.

Shukun Mia, a 28-year-old Bangladeshi, was pumping water out of a ditch in this working class residential area with two others when its sides collapsed, burying them all. While two of the victims were able to keep their heads above the three-feet-deep water, Mia became completely submerged and remained stuck underneath a landslide of mud and rocks.

The sewage project on which the three workers were engaged is being undertaken by the Bin Samar Construction Company.

Civil Defense personnel quickly arrived on the scene to free the two men who survived the accident, and they were transported to King Fahd Hospital with minor injuries. However, it took rescuers one and a half hours to remove the dead man’s body using heavy lifting equipment.

Rescue efforts were complicated by a continuous flow of water into the ditch.

Majid Abdullah Al-Ghamdi, a civil defense officer, was lowered into the ditch and used his hands to remove the rocks that were on top of the victim. He then tied a rope under the dead man’s shoulders, and a crane was used to lift the victim’s body out.

Almaz Hussein, a co-worker of the dead man, told Arab News at the scene: “When the ditch collapsed, we tried to get the men out. We were able to keep the heads of the two workers above water until the rescuers arrived. But we could not get Shukun out. He struggled to free himself for almost two minutes, but then lost consciousness.”

Mia has been a construction worker in the Kingdom for five years, and had just returned from vacation after visiting his family in Bangladesh.

Over 300 people gathered to watch the rescue efforts and extra police personnel were called in to control the crowd. There was a danger of further landslide conditions being created by the crowd trying to peer into the ditch to watch the rescue efforts. Police officers used wooden sticks and threw stones to keep the crowd back.

Police took in five people, including the project manager and an engineer, for questioning.

There are more than a million Third World immigrants in the Kingdom who work in the construction industry, and they earn as little as SR150 a month. Safety standards on construction sites are often poorly enforced.