An in­dus­tri­al ac­ci­dent at a con­struc­tion site in Ari­ma on May 25, has claimed the life of a sec­ond man.

Clarence Di­az died whilst ward­ed in the In­ten­sive Care Unit at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, Mt Hope on June 5 – af­ter spend­ing 11 days fight­ing for his life.

Di­az’s friend and work­mate Jef­fer­son Joseph, died af­ter he was crushed by a steel beam which col­lapsed on them as they stood at the top of two heights of scaf­fold­ing, hold­ing aloft a steel beam which was be­ing weld­ed at the time.

Joseph, 47, of Sie­u­nar­ine Trace, Kel­ly Vil­lage, Ca­roni – died around 2 pm on May 25, at the con­struc­tion site in Tumpuna Gar­dens, Tumpuna Road, Ari­ma.

Di­az, of Las Lo­mas Num­ber One, suf­fered mul­ti­ple life-threat­en­ing in­juries and had been ward­ed in a crit­i­cal con­di­tion at hos­pi­tal since.

Re­ports in­di­cate Joseph and Di­az were not wear­ing any pro­tec­tive or safe­ty equip­ment when the in­ci­dent oc­curred.

Di­az’s rel­a­tives said con­trary to ini­tial re­ports which claimed he had on­ly suf­fered an in­jured el­bow, he had in fact sus­tained ex­ten­sive head in­juries which he nev­er re­cov­ered from.

Claim­ing this was the sec­ond such type of in­ci­dent to oc­cur with­in the last three years at the un­reg­is­tered com­pa­ny which is based in Las Lo­mas – one man who pre­vi­ous­ly worked for the out­fit said, “No­body wears safe­ty gears at any of the sites.”

Hav­ing left the pri­vate­ly owned op­er­a­tion sev­er­al years ago, he spec­u­lat­ed that the own­er had con­tin­ued to ig­nore health and safe­ty pro­to­cols which had now led to two more men dy­ing in the process.

He urged in­ves­ti­ga­tors to clamp down on the own­er as he de­mand­ed ac­count­abil­i­ty as he lament­ed, “Peo­ple dy­ing and he get­ting away with it for too long… in or­der to cut back and save a dol­lar.”