Barely four weeks after we reported the death of a worker at its terminal, another tragedy was recorded over the weekend the Five Star Logistics Terminal at Tin Can Island port, Lagos when a dockworker died in the course of duty.
The late dockworker who is also a member of the dockworkers branch of Maritime Workers Union of Nigeria reportedly died at about 1a.m on Saturday.
Barely four weeks after we reported the death of a worker at its terminal, another tragedy was recorded over the weekend the Five Star Logistics Terminal at Tin Can Island port, Lagos when a dockworker died in the course of duty.
The late dockworker who is also a member of the dockworkers branch of Maritime Workers Union of Nigeria reportedly died at about 1a.m on Saturday.
Reliable sources confirmed to Shipping Position Daily authoritatively yesterday that the identity of the late dockworker is Ahmed Usman and that he resided at number 10 Seriki Street, Idi Araba in Mushin and hailed from Nassarawa state.
Eye witnesses who were at the scene confirmed that the late Usman, was a specialist in forklift at the terminal and that he died while trying to avoid an accident at the terminal at night.
Giving an insight into how he met his tragic end , one of the deceased colleagues, (names with held) disclosed that: "Usman tried to control the tractor while descending from the vessel at night but unknowingly for him, there was an SUV car parked at the outer part of the ramp which he tried to avoid".
"In the process of that, the tractor reversed straight into the water pushing Umar down the quayside and into the lagoon”.
The source added that the dockworker was working on a ship identified as MV Brilliant Ace which had arrived at the terminal on Thursday May 23 with both new and used vehicles.
He added that when the accident happened, some dockworkers who were also on night duty witnessed it, but there was nothing they could do because the deceased had already been pushed down before anyone could realise what was happening.
However ,he revealed that operational activities at the terminal was placed on a halt ,all through Saturday as dockworkers on duty at the ship side stopped the discharge of vehicles from the said vessel.
He also explained that Usman drowned because of the weight of the safety jacket and the safety boots he had on, adding that they noticed that the deceased struggled against the tide for about 15 minutes, floating on the water before he finally drowned.
A dockworker who spoke to our correspondent yesterday however complained that lack of life guard at the quay side led to the death of their colleague. According to him, he struggled for long, but because there was no one to assist him, he finally went down.
The visibly agitated dockworker stressed that "supposing Five Star Logistics terminal has life guard I don't think that our late colleague will just die like that, because he was struggling for over 15 minutes before finally drowned that night”.
Curiously, both the leadership of the union and the management of Five Star Logistics Terminal made themselves unavailable to our correspondent who made frantic efforts to reach them for comments.
Several efforts that were made by Shipping Position Daily to get to the management of the Terminal were rebuffed by the security men at the gate.
Also several telephone calls that were made to the president of dockworkers’ branch of the Maritime Workers Union of Nigeria; Comrade Adewale Adeyanju was unanswered. Similarly, the text message that was also sent to his telephone was unreplied.
Shipping Position Daily recalls that a staff of the terminal who was simply identified as Uduak died last month, also during an accident at the terminal. Uduak met his untimely death when the ‘ramp’ of a loader trailer fell on him, crushing him to death instantly.
Curiously, like the latest accident, the one in which Uduak died also occurred on a weekend.
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