Accident prevention is cheaper than the accident

Yesterday evening, a 2-year old boy fell in an unused open borewell in a village in Andhra Pradesh. Today evening he died, though efforts were made to save the child.

It is not uncommon to hear such news now and then. There are many unreported incidents as well. Some lucky ones were rescued safely and many unlucky children could not. It is outrageous that when a borewell is dug, till other piping work is completed, the well is to be capped and all it costs for a perfect capping is only about Rs 500. People spend thousands of rupees for sinking a borewell but think that it costs them to securely close. Now, see the cost of resources put into saving the child fell in the borewell.
- EMRI service 108 personnel spent more than 24 hrs in rescue efforts
- District collector and SP also spent considerable time
- Earth removers were engaged on the job (it costs about Rs 500-1000 per hour when you rent it and for 24 hrs, more than Rs 20000/- is spent and this amount alone can be used for capping 40 wells. If you add cost of personnel and medical emergency care engaged in the work, the rescue efforts amount to another Rs 20,000/-)

It is good that TV9 channel started a campaign to inform them about all open wells so that message can be driven into concerned officials for capping the wells and save other children.

In the field of industrial safety, it is known that cost of accident prevention is only 1/4 of direct cost of the accident. Infact, the savings accrued from accident prevention, over a period of time, will far exceed the money spent on accident prevention and thus experts say that SAFETY IS CHEAP AND COSTS NOTHING compared to the expenditure one has to incur once an accident occurs.

The persons responsible for leaving the borewells in open condition should be held responsible and should be made to pay for their lapse so that all others will realize and try to be vigilant in their actions.

Publicity and awareness campaigns like the one started by TV9 should be on continuous basis and voluntary and should not be like knee-jerk reaction.

Open borewells - fall of kids

Now a days, it is a regular phenomenon of reading / viewing the fall of innocent kids in open borewells. We also see, once a kid falls into a borewell, after it is brought into the attention by media, all agencies will come into action. For 8-10 inch borewell, a big well will be dug parallelly and a contact will be made to save the child. Proper closure of borewell, once dug, will cost a few hundred rupees. This responsibility should be squarely put on the person who digs it and after seeing so many incidents of fall of children into open borewells, it becomes necessary to even FENCE the closed borewell in a secured manner. If a borewell after drilling is not fitted with pumping arrangement immediately, then, it should not be taken up for drilling. Work should be completed in all respects and it is like playing with the lives of innocent children, IF the wells are not closed in a proper and secured manner. A lock and key arrangement should be made. If there is possibility of theft of lock, then, hand / motorised pump should be fitted immediately and the borewell should be put into use. Then only, I feel, we can avoid these recurring incidents of fall of children into thse wells.
Any person, who leaves the open borewells after drilling, should be put behind bars without bail. Then only people will realize the dangers posed by these open borewells.