Court orders company owner to pay blood money after two workers are electrocuted in Dubai

Accused given one-month suspended sentence and told to pay Dh200,000 to the families of each victim

A court in Dubai ordered the owner of a company to pay blood money to the families of his two workers after they were electrocuted by exposed wiring. AFP

A court in Dubai has ordered the owner of a company to pay blood money to the families of two workers who were electrocuted while carrying out servicing work on a fish pond.

The Indian owner of the company, who was also given a one-month suspended sentence, was charged with negligence, including failure to provide safety training to the workers.

Dubai Court of Misdemeanours was told that the untrained workers were sent to a villa in Jumeirah in July last year to clean a fish pond, but without any safety equipment.

This week, the court ordered the accused to pay a fine of Dh3,000 and Dh200,000 in blood money to the families of each victim.

He denies the charges, claiming he was out of the UAE when the incident happened, and the case has been transferred to the Appeal Court.

On the day of the incident, the workers used a water pump to clean the pond but left a wire exposed, which led to their death.

Judges were told the housemaid alerted the owner of the villa who called the police.

"My maid told me one of the workers fell in the pond," the villa owner said. "They died while doing maintenance work due to electric shock resulting from poor wiring from a cleaning device."

A Dubai Municipality report presented to the judges said the wire of the electric pump fell in the pond.

The two workers stepped into the pond to clean the stones without turning off the electricity and did not wear rubber safety boots.

“The company didn’t provide proper training to the workers and there was no proper supervision by the company to adhere to safety rules to prevent the accident,” the report said.

A sales manager who dropped the workers off said he was not aware that the company did not have a licence to carry out such maintenance work.

“The two victims were working in sales as well as cleaning and maintaining fish ponds," the sales manager said.

"I dropped them at the villa but after one hour received a call that they had died. The two were new in the company."