As six Doosan Enerbility employees remain out of contact due to severe flooding in Nepal, Park Jeong-won, chairman of Doosan Group, arrived on the 29th.
Park arrived at Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu, Nepal, at about 6 p.m. (local time) that day with Park Gee-won, chairman and CEO of Doosan Enerbility (vice chairman of Doosan Group). Park plans to stay in Kathmandu and personally oversee the search and rescue at the accident site.
Meeting with reporters, the vice chairman said, "I understand that the rescue of the employees who are still out of contact is in full swing," adding, "So I thought it would be best to come and check the rescue efforts in person, and I arrived today."
Regarding the delay in deploying helicopters, he said, "We will work closely with the government response team to ensure rescue operations can proceed as quickly as possible."
He also noted regarding the families of the missing employees, "I met them before departure and offered words of comfort," adding, "We will do our utmost as a company."
The accident site is about 70 kilometers from Kathmandu. On the 26th, six Doosan Enerbility employees working at a local hydropower plant construction site went missing after the massive flooding in Nepal.
Park also wrote on the in-house bulletin board on the 27th, saying, "We are making the confirmation of employees' safety and their safe return the top priority, working closely with local authorities and related agencies, and checking the local situation through every possible channel," and, "We are concentrating our companywide capabilities so that the necessary measures for search, rescue, and recovery can be carried out swiftly and systematically."
Doosan Enerbility is operating an emergency response headquarters of about 40 people at its Bundang office in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province (headed by Vice President Lee Dong-soo, head of the EHS division). In Nepal, an on-site response team that includes Vice Chairman and CEO Jeong Yeon-in is active.
Doosan Group also provided an emergency $5 million (about 6.9 billion won) to the Rasuwa region of Nepal to support recovery activities, including search and rescue in flood-affected areas.
Of the 16 Korean employees at the hydropower plant construction site, 10, excluding the six missing, had been stranded by the flood and moved to Kathmandu the previous day.
Doosan Enerbility had planned to deploy helicopters that day to search for the missing, but could not due to worsening weather and permit issues with the Nepalese authorities.