KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 28 — Mass Rapid Transit Corporation Sdn Bhd (MRT Corp) today denied its project contractor had failed to inform rescue personnel of the accident at the Semantan portal worksite, insisting the emergency alert was made just minutes after it occurred.

In a statement here, MRT Corp said the contractor for the site, Sunway Construction Sdn Bhd, called the emergency number 999 at 1.38pm yesterday, approximately 18 minutes after the incident.

“Records showed that Sunway Construction’s site engineer on duty Encik Syed Asyraf Syed Yahya made a 999 call at 1.38pm.

“Jabatan Pertahanan Awam personnel arrived at the scene some 15 minutes later and administered first aid to survivors. They also evacuated the workers who were involved in the incident and sent them to Hospital Kuala Lumpur,” MRT Corp strategic communications and public relations director Amir Mahmood Razak said in the statement.

The firm handling the multi-billion ringgit rail line was responding to The Malaysian Insider’s article yesterday quoting Kuala Lumpur Fire and Rescue Department (Bomba) assistant operations director Azizan Ismail as saying that he was puzzled why the authority had not been alerted earlier.

The report also claimed that Bomba only received a distress call from the public on the incident at around 3pm.

Amir only said in MRT Corp’s statement today that the contractor had adhered strictly to Standard Operating Procedures (SOP), which includes informing the authorities immediately after any accident had occurred.

MRT Corp contractors are also required to have Emergency Response Teams with set protocols and SOPs, he said.

“Any incident is immediately reported via email and SMS to two sets of internal groups.

“One group is the ‘Action’ group whose members have responsibilities to implement certain actions following an incident. The other group is the ‘For Information’ group who are kept informed and updated of any incident,” he explained in the statement.

During the 1.20pm incident yesterday, three workers were assembling a rebar cage at the Semantan Portal V4 Site when the ties that held the rebars gave way and fell on the workers.

Bangladesh national Rijaul Abdul Goni, 40, died on the spot while Shanaullah, 37, also from Bangladesh, was injured. The third worker Rozlu Karim escaped injury.

Last August, three Bangladeshi construction workers were killed at a Kota Damansara site after a 38m-long span weighing 650 tonnes was dislodged from a guideway under construction and fell to the ground below.

This incident prompted MRT Corp’s then chief executive Datuk Azhar Abdul Hamid to offer his resignation and take responsibility for the accident. The company later rejected his resignation.

Last June, a slab of metal fell from an MRT construction site in Pusat Bandar Damansara onto the main road and crushed the passenger side of a car. There were no passengers in the vehicle and the driver escaped unhurt.

The Klang Valley MRT project is Malaysia’s most ambitious infrastructure undertaking and aims to connect the Greater Kuala Lumpur area via a three-line rail transit network. The construction of its first line began 2011 and is scheduled for completion in 2016.