Eastleigh

Man dies after being electrocuted at Eastleigh construction site

A construction worker lost his life after he was electrocuted at Eastleigh's Section III area.

By Mary Wambui | Monday, March 25, 2024

The deceased's body was moved to Mama Lucy Hospital for a post-mortem as the probe into the incident commenced.

In yet another construction site accident, a construction worker lost his life after he was electrocuted at Eastleigh's Section III area on Saturday evening.

Police said the deceased, 29-year-old Kylo Nzangi, was electrocuted while trying to disconnect a floodlight that was being used on the ground floor of the building under construction.

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"He was rushed to Mother and Care hospital where he was pronounced dead upon his arrival," a police report noted.

The deceased's body was moved to Mama Lucy Hospital for a post-mortem as the probe into the incident commenced.

The incident happened barely days after a teenager died in another incident at a construction on Eastleigh's Second Avenue, 7th Street.

He succumbed to head injuries after he was hit by a falling stone as he walked past a building under construction.

The deceased, 19-year-old Abdikaff Mohammed was rushed to Care Hospital where he later passed away.

The deaths raise questions about safety lapses at construction sites in the country especially in the Eastleigh neighborhood and other parts of the city that are experiencing a construction boom with many residential apartments coming up.

According to an assessment by the Institution of Engineers of Kenya, Nairobi County experiences about 64 fatalities per 100,000 in construction sites each year.

It further noted that there is no reliable data on accident cases in construction because most contractors do not report all the accidents.

Other than deaths, other construction site workers have been left crippled and without a source of income as a result of such accidents.

These accidents, it said, mainly occur due to a lack of safety rules in most construction sites and when they exist, the regulatory authority is weak in implementing each rule effectively.

In other cases, corruption has been blamed for these accidents where regulatory agencies receive bribes to look the other way.

Similar findings by the Directorate of Occupational Safety and Health (Dosh) show that about 237 accidents were recorded in construction sites in a four-year period, with 32 fatalities in Nairobi.