"I have become a burden on my poor, aged mother," 50-year-old construction worker Tofazzal Hossain said in a choked voice as he shows his left leg, which has been cut off from the knee.

Tears rolled down his cheeks as he tried to describe his predicament.

Tofazzal sustained serious injuries to his left leg while working just in front of the Phoenix building that collapsed on February 25.

The doctors at Dhaka Medical College and Hospital (DMCH) had no option but to cut off the injured leg.

"I earn my living by manual work. If I don't have my leg, how will I work? Who is going to feed my 70-year-old mother in the village?" Tofazzal asks.

Uncertainty of means of living rather than physical sufferings concerns many other injured construction workers languishing at DMCH.

Mohammad Ali, a mason, had his vein severed as brick pieces fell on his head and shoulder.

Ali's condition has improved, but his shoulder may never heal, and in that case Ali will never be able to get back his normal life, doctors said.

As a mason Ali earned reasonably well -- Tk 250 per day. But the Phoenix building collapse has left him crippled, perhaps forever.

"Who will maintain my family? Will my children's study stop? I see darkness all around me," Ali's wife Joynobunnesa wondered sitting beside her husband.

Rickshawpuller Abdus Samad, 30, was passing along the doomed building on the fateful day of February 25. As the building collapsed, Samad fell under a heap of loosened bricks and got fractures in his backbone and legs.

"My son Samad used to feed me. He has his wife and two children too, who will look after them? My son dreamt of buying a rickshaw van. How will he drive it now?" said Samad's aged mother Amena Khatun.

Dr AKM Mohiuddin Pintu, an assistant registrar at DMCH, who is attending these ill-fated people, said they are now out of danger but most of them will never be able to work normally.

Escaping death, they now apprehend an uncertain future.