Emergency services carry a man on a stretcher outside the workshop in Tangiers
RABAT, Feb 10 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Morocco’s premier has promised “sanctions” after 28 people died when heavy rain flooded an illegal textiles workshop in a basement, reviving a debate on work conditions in the North African country.
Authorities in Tangiers reported that 28 bodies, mostly of women, had been pulled out of the factory in a residential area of the northern port city.
“The victims were trapped with no way to get out” and drowned, said senior fire and rescue service official Abderrahim Kabajj on Morocco’s 2M television station.
An inquiry has been launched into the accident.
“Responsibilities will be determined and necessary sanctions will be taken … this cannot pass without consequences,” Prime Minister Saad-Eddine El Othmani said in a message of condolences on Facebook.
Morocco’s informal sector plays a key role in the economy, with over half of the country’s textile and leather production coming from unregulated operations, according to Morocco’s employers’ association.
Many fail to meet official safety standards, it says.
Moroccan lawmakers on Monday observed a minute of silence in parliament in memory of the “martyrs of the informal economy”, before the first burials in the evening.
Around 200,000 people are employed in Morocco’s informal textiles industry, according to official figures.
Morocco registers some 2,000 deaths each year due to work-related accidents, “one of the highest figures” in the Middle East and North Africa, according to the Economic, Social and Environmental Council (CESE). — NNN-AGENCIES
