Male Fire: 10 Instances Of Indian Migrant Labourers Killed Abroad

The fire brigade in Male, the capital of the Maldives, reported that a fire spread through crowded housing for foreign workers on November 10, killing at least 10 people and injuring many more. 

Local media reported that the identification of bodies is proving difficult due to the fact that they are severely burned. “The garage is located on the ground floor, while the first-floor houses cramped living quarters for migrant workers – the only ventilation – a single window,” the report said. An estimated 15 people who live in the building remain missing.

The inhumane conditions and number of fatalities of the Indian migrants has been criticised several times by human rights activists and like-minded bodies over the last decade. Despite the backlash, not enough measures have been taken to put a stop to long-standing abuses of labour laws.

India, which is the largest source of international migrants in the world, has about 8.9 million citizens working in the Gulf. The UAE has the highest Indian expat community, and recorded at least five deaths every day between 2017 to 2021. The number of deaths spiked from 2,454 in 2020 to 2,714 in 2021. At the same time, Qatar reported 420 deaths in 2021 and 385 in 2020. 

•    More than 6,500 migrant workers from Asia, including India, have died in Qatar since it won the right to host the 2022 World Cup 10 years ago. Over half of migrant worker deaths in Qatar have been attributed to “unknown causes,” or “natural causes” or “cardiovascular diseases”. The World Cup committee’s reply was silent on the issue of compensation and whether the cause of these deaths would be analysed.

•    Rajendra Prabhu Mandaloji, 40, died by suicide in September 2019. Before he left for Qatar, Mandaloji was promised a monthly salary of 2,500 Qatari riyals, (approximately Rs 57,000). When he arrived in Doha in 2016, however, he was expected to perform the same work for 1,000 Qatari riyals (approximately Rs 23,000. The difficult working conditions, poor wages and financial pressure disturbed him mentally. After he died, his employers asked his family to pay Rs 5 lakh to send his body home, but the Indian embassy eventually intervened and sorted out the issue. 

•    Migrant worker Rajibur Rahaman, 45, was killed in a road accident in October in 2021 in Saudi Arabia.

•    Fifty-five-year-old Sunke Rajaiah, a migrant labourer from the Kondapur village of Jagtial district, Telangana, breathed his last on April 14, 2014, at a hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. His family waited for almost five months to see his mortal remains due to the Covid pandemic and the suspension of flights in the lockdown.

•    Twelve Indians were among 17 people killed in Dubai in 2019 when a bus, mostly with Eid vacationers coming from Oman, entered a restricted lane and rammed into a low-clearance sign.

•    Thirteen workers, nine of them Indians, were killed and 14 others injured in Dubai when the minibus they were travelling in rammed in a parked truck in 2014. A Dubai Health Authority spokesperson on Sunday said that 10 patients were received by the Rashid Hospital's Trauma and Emergency Centre on Saturday. 

•    Five Indian workers were killed in an accident in Saudi Arabia in 2014 when the van they were travelling in overturned due to a tyre burst on a highway. All five were from Malappruam district of Kerala. The deceased have been identified as Muhammad Saleem, 32, Muhammed Nawas, 26, Noushad, 26, Thondiyil Koru Sridaran, 35, and Kottiyattil Janardhanan, 40.

•    In February 2013, at least 22 migrant workers died when a gravel-filled truck with faulty brakes rammed their bus.

•    Indian labourer Athiraman Kannan kept to his routine in the hours before he jumped off the world’s tallest building in 2011, Burj Khalifa. Isolated and stressed, he told friends he planned to return home and settle the matter days before his death. Local media said Kannan had been denied permission to take leave, a charge his employer Arabtec strongly denies. Kannan’s leap off the Burj Khalifa was the 26th known suicide in 2011 itself. 

•    M. Devendra, 27, was laying water pipes, along with two other Indian workers, Gangayya and Bala Lingam, in a nine-foot-deep trench at a construction site in the Salmabad area in the heart of Bahrain in 2008 when the wall around them collapsed on Saturday. Devendra was buried alive and the other two sustained injuries.