In an incident reported in a local news paper, a person died of electrocution while cleaning the welding machine in the morning. This implies damaged cables and improper/no earthing to the machine. Possibly the power supply was not switched off the previous day and in the same condition, the person would have carried out cleaning of the machine.
It is common to see use of structural columns as return lines and no earthing will be available neither for the machine nor the job on which welding will be done. Sometimes when proper length of cable is not available, people use rods or sheets or similar metal pieces as return lines. It is difficult to ensure safety in unorganized sector and even in organized sectors when the work is outsourced.