Yaounde: Young welder dies after electrocution

Ndi Ekoto Achille, 24, was struck after the iron rod he was transporting touched a low-lying Eneo high-tension cable, but the company denies any responsibility.

The family of Ndi Ekoto Achille, a 24-year-old welder, does not know what next to do. He died after electrocution by a low-lying Energy of Cameroon, Eneo high-tension cable in the Blondeau neighbourhood, about 14 km from downtown Yaounde on the highway to the Nsimalen-Yaounde International Airport.

Today, the family owes more than FCFA 500,000 to the Yaounde Central Hospital and is thus unable to go ahead with the burial of the decomposed body. This is after spending over 2 million FCFA to save his life.

Ndi Ekoto Achille died in the Yaounde Central Hospital recently, following the accident of April 29, 2016.

According to his uncle, Mano Ekoto Roger, a welder with whom Ndi Ekoto Achille trained, the incident happened between 9 am and 10 am as Ndi was transporting construction rods across the neighbourhood street to his makeshift workshop.

The cable, said to have been hanging about six metres above the ground, hit the 5.80-metre-long rod, electrocuting him from the neck right to the feet.

Contacted a few days after the accident, Eneo officials at the regional office in downtown Yaounde asked the family to write a formal complaint; which they immediately did.

Sometime after, Eneo national head office in Douala replied, explaining that Ndi Ekoto Achille’s case could not be taken care of because the company was not responsible for the accident.

When Cameroon Tribune met Tcheme Joel, the Head of Department for Hygiene, Security and Environment, in the Eneo regional office in Yaounde on June 6, 2016, he said the journalist’s version of what happened was not what was contained in complaint written by Mano Ekoto Roger.

Tcheme insisted that the accident was not the responsibility of Eneo, even when the reporter pointed out that the high-tension cable was hanging as low as six metres above the ground.

And that as pointer to the fact that something was wrong, an Eneo subcontractor planted another electricity pole at the scene of the accident a few days before Ndi’s death. The new, higher pole has lifted the height of the cable to about 12 metres now.

“As far as my department is concerned, the matter is already foreclosed, except the family wants to go to court,” Tcheme Joel concluded on an insistent note.