Anger after 72 die in Manila sweatshop fire
Print Edition
Seventy-two people died when a fire tore through a footwear factory in the Philippines capital Manila, authorities said yesterday, as survivors blamed barred windows for the disaster and described sweatshop conditions.
Nearly all of those killed in Wednesday’s five-hour blaze were trapped on the second floor of the two-story building, unable to break steel bars over the windows, according to Interior Secretary Mar Roxas.
“They were screaming for help, holding on to the bars,” factory worker Randy Paghubosan, one of the few on the ground floor who escaped, told reporters yesterday. “When we could no longer see their hands, we knew they had died. They died because they were trapped on the second floor.”
Roxas promised justice for the victims as he expressed anger at the lack of fire exits and the cause of the blaze — welding that was being carried out near flammable chemicals.
“Why was welding work allowed near all those chemicals? Why were the second floor windows enclosed in steel bars? Why were 69 of the 72 on the second floor,” Roxas told reporters after meeting with victims’ relatives.
The factory in the rundown district of Valenzuela, on the northern edge of Manila, made cheap slippers and sandals for the local market.
Factory workers there toiled for well below the minimum wage while surrounded by foul-smelling chemicals and had no fire safety training, according to survivors, relatives and the nation’s biggest union.
“The families can’t help but be angry about what happened. We will never forget this,” said Rodrigo Nabor, whose two sisters were inside the factory and presumed dead.
Nabor was among relatives of factory workers waiting for body bags at a village hall converted into a makeshift morgue.
Nabor said his sisters, Bernardita Logronio, 32, and Jennylyn Nabor, 26, often complained of foul-smelling chemicals in their workplace.
“They said they keep an electric fan on to drive some of the smell away,” he said.
Nabor said pay depended on how many flip-flops they finished, and could be as little as 300 pesos (US$6.70) a day.
Nabor’s sisters each had a young child.
The minimum wage in Manila is 481 pesos a day.
No safety drills
One survivor, 23-year-old Lisandro Mendoza, said he escaped by running out the back door, but that the company had not conducted any fire safety education or drills during his five months there.
“We were running not knowing exactly where to go... if people had known what to do, it would have been different,” said Mendoza.
The Trade Union Congress of the Philippines, the largest labor federation in the country, said its preliminary investigation revealed extremely dangerous conditions for the factory workers.
“We found out that the building had no fire exits... they had no safety officers who could handle chemicals... so there were many health and safety violations,” union spokesman Alan Tanjusay said.
Kentex Manufacturing Corporation, which ran the factory, could not be contacted.
In the deadliest fire in Manila in recent times, 162 people were killed in a blaze that gutted a disco in 1996.
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