Factory fire kills 37

2007-10-22 12:07

Beijing - A fire erupted at an unlicensed shoe factory in southeastern China, killing 37 people in the latest industrial accident to hit the world's fourth-largest economy, officials and state media said on Monday.

The blaze at the Feida workshop, located near the city of Putian in coastal Fujian province, broke out at 13:50 GMT on Sunday and was extinguished an hour later, the official Xinhua news agency said.

"Initial investigations showed 56 workers were in the workshop at the time of the fire," Xinhua quoted provincial government spokesperson Zhu Qing as saying.

A hospital official said some of the 19 people injured were in critical condition.

Pictures posted on the Fujian provincial government website showed firemen standing by a scorched and still smoking concrete building with iron doors.

"It happened on the sixth floor of the building where workers work, eat and sleep," the township official, who gave his surname as Fang, told AFP by telephone.

"The workshop is on the first and second floor, while workers sleep above."

Safety and law enforcement officials have launched an investigation to determine what caused the blaze, Xinhua said.

Local government sources told the agency that the factory had been operating without a licence, although officials contacted by AFP on Monday could not confirm this.

Fujian is home to one of China's densest concentrations of sweatshops, often staffed by migrant workers from around the country who produce relatively simple products for world markets in often poorly regulated conditions.

Despite repeated attempts to improve workplace safety in China, officials have little incentive to crack down on such factories as their operations help local economies grow.

Accidents occur regularly across the country due to companies neglecting fire and safety codes, using poor equipment as well as ignoring environmental standards in pursuit of profits.

Government data showed that 898 were killed and 488 injured in the first half of this year in more than 95 300 fires, not including forest fires or those occurring in mines.

In China, considered one of the world's most dangerous places to work, 320 people are killed each day in work-related accidents, the government has said, many in industrial, coal mining and traffic accidents.

Massive fires are also commonplace here.

In 2000, 311 people died in a disco fire in the central city of Luoyang. In 1994, more than 300, most of them schoolchildren, lost their lives in a blaze at a movie theatre in northwest China's Xinjiang region.

- AFP