Sugar worker battling for life after Enmore factory explosion

May 22, 2011 News 0

A sugar worker is battling for his life after an explosion last week at the Enmore factory.
Officials of the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) yesterday confirmed that 47-year-old Jainarine Singh, called ‘Derrick’ of Railway Embankment, East Coast Demerara was working last Sunday, at a recently modified section of the factory, when the incident occurred.
Singh was hit in the chest with pieces of metal. He was taken to the Woodlands Hospital where doctors operated on his damaged intestines.
“He was walking after the incident but according to our latest reports this morning (yesterday), he was unconscious. We are monitoring the situation,” a senior GuySuCo official told Kaieteur News.
Government recently commissioned a US$12.5M sugar packaging plant at Enmore. Modifications were made to the nearby factory to allow sugar to be taken by conveyor belts to the packaging plant.

An injured Jainarine Singh at the Woodlands Hospital yesterday.

Singh was apparently in this modified section where the dryers are located when a component blew. The metal shrapnel was what hit the sugar worker.
“We are investigating the matter now,” the GuySuCo official said.
Singh’s wife of seven years, Sita, told Kaieteur News that her husband was employed at the sugar company for 31 years as a ‘boiler operator’ until he was recently transferred to the ‘mills and boiler’ section.
Initially, he worked at the La Bonne Intention (LBI) location before he was shifted to the Enmore factory. This is the first time he is involved with an accident at his worksite.
Singh is currently in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the Woodlands Hospital hooked up to machines to assist his breathing.
Hospital officials said that following the first operation, he experienced breathing difficulties. Doctors then placed him on a “respiratory machine”.