Machine kills female worker five days after employment.

Barely five days after she was employed,
Miss Happiness Okon, a machine operator at
IMPCO Company Limited on Fatai Atere Road,
Mushin, Lagos, has been killed by the firm’s
plastic moulding machine.
The 21-year-old girl came to Lagos in the
last quarter of 2011 to work to raise money
to pursue her long time ambition of
studying Theatre Arts at university.
But her ambition was cut short when on
January 23, 2012, Okon went to work but
never returned. She was allegedly killed by
the company’s moulding machine.
Her death on the fateful day has led to a
dispute between the family and the
company.
The family insisted that the company was
economical with the truth about the real
cause of the girl’s death.
The girl’s uncle, Mr. Effiong Nyah, told Metro
that there was no iota of truth in the
company’s claim that the girl walked into a
machine and died in the process.
He said the way the company concealed the
death from members of the family and their
failure to allow them to check the machine
which allegedly killed Okon made them to
believe the company was culpable.
Nyah said, “I received a call from one of my
brothers that Happiness (Okon) was dead
and that a machine killed her. When I got to
the company, I was not allowed into the
premises even when I told them I was the
guardian of the girl.
“After some time, a person who identified
himself as the Personnel Manager came and
said the company was sorry for what
happened. I then asked him to allow me to
see her corpse at least, he shouted at me, ‘to
see what; to see what? It was then I knew
something was amiss. I kept silent.
“Not long, a man came and introduced
himself as a policeman. He came along with
a photographer. Still, they did not allow me
to go in with them. After some time, the
policeman came out with the photographer.
He now asked me to come with them to the
office. When we got there, he showed me
an industrial machine and said it was the
machine that killed Happiness (Okon).
“I was stunned as there was no blood stain
on it. I turned the machine around, no sign
that anything happened there. I became
suspicious and asked them to start the
machine to know how it operates since I am
a machine operator myself but they refused.