Three labourers were taken to hospital and around 100 people were evacuated after a major fire broke out at a labour camp in East Riffa, Bahrain.
The fire started when a stove left burning on a rooftop led to the explosion of two gas cylinders, which sent fireballs hurtling towards a building across the street, resulting in a second rooftop fire. A number of workers were forced to jump to safety from a second-storey window, 10m above the ground.
Marietta Dias, the head of the Migrant Workers Protection Society, said that such incidents are all too common in Bahrain due to hazardous living conditions in labour camps.
“My colleague, who went to view the site, judged it to be a very unsafe place for people to live. There should not have been people cooking on the roof, and 100 people should not have been crammed into an old building of this size.
“It is just like other camps that are not fit for human beings. The government says it is sending inspectors, and that camps will be closed down or renovated, but we’re not seeing this happen much. Something like this alerts everyone for a while and then it dies down.”
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