Chemicals may have been stored on the Tampaco Foils factory ground floor, which officials say would explain how the fire spread so rapidly.
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The death toll from a boiler explosion and subsequent fire at a packaging factory in Bangladesh over the weekend has risen to 31 after more bodies were found in the debris.
He said around 75 people had been scheduled to work the overnight shift, which was to end at 7 a.m.
The reason for the fire in the industrial zone of Tongi, 20km north of Dhaka, was not immediately known. A year later, a commercial complex near Dhaka housing five garment factories collapsed, killing 1,135 people, Bangladesh’s worst industrial disaster.
The blast and ensuing blaze killed 23 workers nearly instantly, and eight more bodies were discovered on Sunday and into early Monday, the Associated Press quoted a local administrator as saying.
Eleven people still remained missing based on information from their relatives, said Fatema-Tuz-Zohra, an official of the control room that the Gazipur administration has opened.
“The boiler explosion and resulting fire. demonstrates the ongoing dangers to industrial workers in that country”, a statement from a consortium of groups, including the International Labor Rights Forum, said.
Garments are a vital sector for Bangladesh and its low wages and duty-free access to Western markets have helped make it the world’s second-largest apparel exporter after China.
The factory supplies multinational and domestic brands, including British-American Tobacco Ltd and Nestle Bangladesh Ltd. He confirmed that at least 23 people had died.
“So far our focus was only on readymade garment factories, but now this disaster has opened our eyes to the fact that we should also focus on other factories”, Syed Ahmed, the head of the Department of Inspection for factories in Bangladesh, said.
Web Desk: A packaging factory in north of the capital Dhaka was engulfed with fire which claimed at least 24 lives leaving dozens of others injured.
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That tragedy triggered worldwide outrage and successfully put pressure on United States and European clothing brands to improve deplorable safety conditions at the factories that supply them.
