Two dead as boiler explodes in Shafiq Colony factory

Owing to a complete absence of safety measures in factories, two more labourers lost their lives after a factory caught fire following a powerful boiler explosion, on Friday. 

Employed at a factory located in Shafiq Colony, the labourers who had sustained severe injuries died before they could be taken to a hospital.

According to rescue sources three fire brigade vehicles were summoned to the site and were able to put the fire out. 

Accidents such as these were a common occurrence in factories in Pakistan where occupational safety measures mostly existed on paper.

Earlier this month three labourers died after they fell into a tank in a chemical factory in Port Qasim.

The victims’ families had claimed that there were no safety arrangements for the workers in the factory.

Raheel, 22, Amir, 24, Aijaz, 30 Muhammad Hassan and Saifur-Rehman had been working atop the tank when one portion of the structure fell.

Rescue teams managed to pull out Muhammad Hassan and Saifur-Rehman in an unconscious condition, however, bodies of the other three labourers could only be recovered the next day.

A medico-legal officer of the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre confirmed that the three died of suffocation. 

On July 5, six labourers died after a boiler blast caused for the roof and walls of an ice factory in New Karachi to cave in.

Identified as 35-year-old Rafiq, 30-year-old Meraj, 40-year-old Muhammad Shairf, Irfan, 38, Salahuddin, 45, and Arshad, 35, four of the men had died before being rescued from under the rubble, while two injured passed away at the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital.