Muscat: An Indian worker died in a labour accommodation fire that broke out on Tuesday morning in the Al Khuwair suburb of Muscat.
Soham Nishad, 25, was sleeping in his room when the wooden construction, built by the side of a villa, caught fire.
“Four or five other workers tried to knock on his door but he had locked it from inside,” a worker told Gulf News on condition of anonymity.
He said that the deceased had returned to his room in the morning after his night duty as a watchman at a company site.
He said there were 81 construction workers in the accommodation, including 59 Indians, but all had gone to various sites run by the Golden Group of Companies.
“The company was black-listed by the Indian embassy three years ago,” P.M. Jabir, the Social Welfare Secretary at the Indian Social Club, told Gulf News. He urged the embassy to conduct a thorough inquiry into how the company managed to recruit Indian workers after being blacklisted. “If the company was removed from the blacklist how was it done?,” he asked.
Three years ago the company was also warned by the Manpower Ministry for the substandard accommodation at the same place where fire killed a young labourer.
“It is made of combustible wooden material and workers were crammed in small spaces,” he saidd.
