'I woke up and found my legs gone'

When he woke up from a week-long coma, it was just the start of his ordeal.

Bangladeshi construction worker Ahammed Selim looked down and got a shock - there was nothing below his waist.

"I woke up and found my legs gone. It was the shock of my life, but the doctors told me that it (the amputation) had to be done because my legs were crushed," Mr Ahammed said in Bengali through an interpreter from his bed at Ang Mo Kio-Thye Hua Kwan Hospital.

Despite this life-shattering blow from the worksite accident, he said he has a greater worry.

"Who will take care of my family?" he asked, propped up on his hospital bed.

Mr Ahammed, 30, said he came to Singapore in December last year to earn money for his children - a boy and a girl, aged seven and three respectively - and his 25-year-old spouse, a housewife.

And although he speaks to them regularly, he now worries for their future.

"How can my family accept me now? I cannot work any more and there is no one else to feed my family," he said.

During our interview on Thursday, Mr Ahammed was occasionally incoherent and still traumatised by his ordeal.

Initially, he smiled, but he grew sadder when he caught sight of his wheelchair that has been his mode of transportation since the accident.

Disbelief

Mr Ahammed said: "I still cannot believe all this happened when all I wanted to do was provide for my family. There's no point wondering what my future will be like, I just have to take things one day at a time".

The accident happened on March 26 at a worksite at Woodlands Crescent when a metal block weighing 150kg crushed his lower body.

He said: "Just before the accident happened, I was inside a hole 11m deep pumping out sewage water.

"While I was doing that, some other workers were raising a metal block from inside the hole, but the chain broke and the object fell in my direction. It all happened so fast, I could not react."

According to a Ministry of Manpower (MOM) incident report, the chain raising the metal block slipped, causing the accident. He was taken to Khoo Teck Puat Hospital.

Mr Ahammed's brother-in-law, Mr Abu Jaffar, 37, who is also working here, said his friends have been trying to cheer him up, but to no avail.

"Doctors saved his life, but he's all but lost hope.

"His friends come to see him regularly and his company has been paying his medical bills, but Ahammed is worried about his family."