A 25-year-old man died yesterday evening after he was trapped inside a boiler at Blue Nile, an established steel manufacturing facility in Thika, Kiambu County.
In what stalled all activities at the mega factory, Caleb Otieno, who had been working at the boiler’s section was ‘accidentally’ liquefied to death leaving family and fellow workers in disbelief and grief.
In what shocked many, none of Otieno’s body organs was recovered as his entire body had been smashed and mixed with the boiler’s fluid.
According to his brother John Agwambo, Otieno who has served the company for at least seven years was performing his normal chores at the open boiler when the gloves he was wearing were stuck in one of the metals he was throwing into the boiler.
In the process of detaching his gloves from the metal, the young man was trapped into the high-heated boiler.
At Otieno’s operational area where the family was allowed to visit, Agwambo stated that the place is dangerously open with zero safety regulations in existence, a situation he blamed for his brother’s death.
Sad enough, the family unearthed that they got wind of their kin’s death through a colleague after the factory management failed to communicate with them.
They took issue with the factory management for taking them in circles and hiding some information about the incident and urged the relevant government agencies to promptly intervene for justice to be served.
Distressed Agwambo stated that conducting a burial ceremony will be hard without a single body organ but the family will announce their next cause of action in due course.
“We were told by the management that the temperature inside the boiler is very high and that his body has been fully shattered. We have requested them to give us a single part of the body to enable us to conduct a burial ceremony but they told us nothing can be traced,” distraught Agwambo said.
Michael Orao, a family friend who accompanied Agwambo regretted that the company has no safety regulations to protect the workers from damages and possible deaths.
Shocked by the turn of events, Orao petitioned the government to instruct the closure of the company until it meets safety standards recommended by law to avert further incidents.
“We have been told this is not the first case and that many have died in similar circumstances but their cases went under after their families were sweet-talked. The workers at this company are not safe and closing it until they meet all the required safety standards will be the best thing to ensure workers’ safety,” Orao said.
