Fire kills 43 in illegal India factory
Clampdowns in city not working
NEW DELHI — Day laborers in one of New Delhi’s most congested neighborhoods demonstrated against unsafe working conditions on Monday, a day after at least 43 people were killed in a devastating fire at an illegal factory there.
Dozens of workers who were asleep when the fire broke out were trapped Sunday in the burning four-story building with little ventilation and just one exit.
Tucked in an alleyway tangled with electrical wires, firefighters had to fight the blaze from 330 feet away. Rescuers carried out survivors and the dead one by one.
The building, zoned for residential use, had been clandestinely and crudely converted into a cluster of small factories in a pattern repeated in old and crowded areas across the city of 28 million.
Tens of thousands of such spaces have been closed in a drive spurred by a decades-old court case, but a Delhi Municipal Corporation census counted more than 30,000 illegal factories last year.
Sunday’s tragedy illustrates authorities’ struggle to control the proliferation of illegal factories in ancient parts of the city long exempt from regulation, despite the Supreme Court order to close them or revamp the surrounding infrastructure, including widening roads and installing water service, according to New Delhi’s master plan.
Factories operating in areas zoned residential were ordered closed.
“What happened in Delhi was unfortunate; they were completely illegalized, so what we have now is this … happening in completely underground ways, all over the city,” said Anuj Bhuwania, an associate law professor at Ambedkar University in New Delhi who has studied the public interest litigation cases that spurred the Supreme Court order.
More than 100 migrant workers earning as little as $2 a day making handbags, caps and other garments worked in the firegutted building’s 5,400 square feet. The dense neighborhood is home to thousands of migrant workers from across India who often live and work in the same space.
Aslam, a local resident who goes by one name, said the building was among many that lack necessary clearances and fire safety equipment.
He said there was a small fire in the same building in March. There were no reported injuries and local residents put it out themselves, but it should have set off alarm bells, he said.
“The building was a disaster in the making. Almost every building in this neighborhood is unsafe,” Aslam said.
Manufacturing in New Delhi has declined with a clampdown on illegal activity and the rise of the service sector. There were about 130,000 factory spaces in 2001, according to an official economy survey. With growing public concern about industrial pollution contributing to New Delhi’s noxious air, authorities have shuttered tens of thousands of illegal factory operations since then.
Jai Prakash, a municipal administrator in New Delhi, said they are continuously trying to close illegal factories and small manufacturing units.