Ten (10) Grain Marketing Board (GMB) employees were seriously injured following an explosion at the company’s Chegutu depot on Tuesday, 31 January.
The injured workers were rushed to Chegutu General Hospital where their condition was said to be stable. In a statement, GMB CEO Rockie Mutenha said:
Preliminary investigations have pointed to a grain bucket elevator explosion which emitted some heat injuring the personnel on duty.
Provincial Civil Protection Unit (CPU) chairman, Josephat Jaji, who is also Mashonaland West Provincial Affairs and Devolution permanent secretary, had put the number of the injured at nine (9):
I can confirm that nine people were injured when an explosion occurred at one of the silos that they were working in.
There were no fatalities and the injured were rushed to Chegutu General Hospital.
We are, however, waiting for experts to give the cause of the blast as investigations are now underway.
A similar tragedy occurred in 2018 when at least four people were killed while three others were seriously injured after an explosion at the GMB’s Lion’s Den Depot, near Chinhoyi.
Both Chegutu and Chinhoyi are in Mashonaland West Province. | ZimLive, NewZimbabwe.com