By Nour Abuzant
A Doha court has sentenced a construction site supervisor to two years’ imprisonment for “negligence that led to an accident” which killed four workers and injured three others last year.
The Syrian and the company that employed him were also fined QR20,000 each. The company was made the second accused in the case.
The court ordered the Syrian, the company and the insurance firm to jointly pay QR150,000 as bloodmoney to the families of three of the victims. The family of the fourth victim had not put up any claim for bloodmoney during the trial and the court said that they can file a claim for it at a later stage in a civil court.
A witness told the court how a crane tilted and fell at a  worksite  near the West  Bay on March 19, 2007, burying four workers and injuring three, two of them critically.
He said the workers were involved in a “complicated operation” at  around 6pm when the accident occurred. An engineer representing the company,said the crane was imported from China and was being operated for the first time.
The court found the supervisor guilty of assigning the work to a batch of untrained workers, who were not qualified to do the job.
The judge, Mamon Hamour, said that the company committed  a fatal mistake when it assigned such complicated work to an inexperienced supervisor, the first accused in the case.
The victims were identified as three Filipinos aged 20, 40 and 48 and an Indian (25).