Carelessness or negligence is a matter which requires an investigation to prove. For an employee who met with the accident the accident should never be deemed as caused by his negligence. If anybody meets with a road accident while crossing the road, there may be two views, ie, the man was careless abd the vehicle driver was careless. The injured man will always say that he was very careful. Similarly, the employee will always say that he was carefully doing the work. The management will say that he was doing it very carelessly as if the supervisor or manager saw that the employee was doing the work very carelessly but remained silent thinking that let his hand be cut!! Is it so?. No, therefore, what is most important is whether the employee was doing a work which was not assigned to him. For example, if an accountant has gone to the plant room and tried to fix a problem with a conveyor and while doing so his hand was cut, then it is due to negligence since he was not suppose to do that job. (Let me define the word negligence as doing something which an ordinary man should not do and not doing something which an ordinary man should do)
The second thing is the capacity of an employee to engage a particular work. If a work requires supervision by the Foreman or Maintenance Manager, but the work was undertaken in the absence of the Foreman/ Manager and the worker was injured, then it shall be deemed to have incurred due to negligence. However, if there was only instruction to do the work by the Foreman/ manager but he was not supervised, then the charge of negligence will be on the Foreman/ Manager.
These are the various possibilities which may come across in an investigation to find whether the employee was acting negligently or not. In the normal circumstances, if the employee is covered by ESI, then it is common to send the Accident Report saying that the employee was doing the work with ultimate care. In case of others also, it is desirable not to treat otherwise.
In any case, giving immediate medical attention and reporting to the authorities are the preliminary steps to be taken. After that only you can proceed with investigation to find out what exactly happened at work site. You can question each and every employee who was present at that time. Also explore the above possibilities about the capacity of the workman to do the work without supervision etc.
Regards,
Madhu.T.K