An Indian Air Force plane has brought back the bodies of 45 workers who died in a fire in Kuwait.
this fire broke out On Wednesday, 176 Indian workers lived in a residential building in Manjav city.
Kuwaiti authorities said the fire killed 50 people, including 45 from India and three from the Philippines. The two bodies have not yet been identified.
An Indian minister arrived in Kuwait on Thursday to coordinate efforts to identify the victims and bring them back to the country.
Two-thirds of Kuwait’s population are foreign workers and the country is highly dependent on migrant labor, particularly in the construction and domestic sectors.
Human rights groups often express concern about their living conditions.
Dozens of workers, mostly Indians, were also injured in the fire.
Indian Minister Kirti Vardhan Singh said DNA tests were being conducted to confirm the identities of the victims.
Among the workers confirmed dead, 23 were from Kerala, 7 from Tamil Nadu, 3 each from Andhra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, 2 from Odisha, Bihar, Punjab, Karnataka One person each from Maharashtra, West Bengal, Jharkhand and Haryana.
Singh said that the Indian government has arranged a special air force flight to bring back the body.
The flight landed in the Kerala city of Kochi on Friday morning and the bodies of the workers from the southern Indian state were to be handed over to authorities before continuing on to Delhi.
Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and other state legislators arrived at the airport to receive the bodies and pay their respects.
The state government has arranged for an ambulance to take the body of the worker home for the last rites.
“This is a huge tragedy for our country. Migrant workers in Kerala are the lifeblood of our country. The fires in Kuwait are one of the biggest tragedies to affect our communities,” Mr Vijayan said.
State and federal governments have announced compensation for the families of fire victims.
In Kuwait, authorities said they were inspecting health and safety conditions at several buildings housing foreign workers in the country.
according to arab timesAn investigation by relevant departments found that the cause of the fire was an electrical short circuit in the security room on the ground floor of the six-story building.
A senior Kuwait Fire Service official said on Wednesday explain The flammable material is used as partitions between rooms and apartments within the building.
Kuwait prosecutors have detained a citizen and a number of expatriates on charges of manslaughter and negligent failure to implement fire safety measures, The Times reported.
After the fire, the country’s Deputy Prime Minister Sheikh Fahd Youssef Al-Sabah accused the owners of greed and said breaches of building standards had led to the tragedy.
