DUSHANBE, September 12, 2012 Asia-Plus — There are no Tajiks among those fourteen persons that were killed in a fire outside Moscow on Tuesday, Davlat Nazriyev, a spokesman for the Tajik Foreign Ministry, told Asia-Plus today.
According to him, employees of the Tajik Migration Service’s office in Moscow yesterday visited the fire site. “There are no Tajik nationals among the fire victims,” the MFA spokesman said, noting that all those killed were Vietnamese citizens.
We will recall that the fire that broke out in a garment factory in the town of Yegoryevsk, southeast of Moscow yesterday killed at least 14 migrant workers.
Firefighters sent to put out the blaze reportedly found 14 bodies in the factory, and four victims were hospitalized with burns.
Some Russian media sources reported that all those killed were citizens of Tajikistan.
Meanwhile, Russia’s Ministry for Emergency Situations reported that all those killed in the fire were Vietnamese citizens.
Interfax reports the factory was illegal.
Reuters reports that many migrant workers from Asian countries work in Russian factories in cramped conditions that are often at risk from fires. Death rates from fires are far higher in Russia than in Western countries such as Britain and the United States.
According to Reuters, a fire in April on Moscow”s outskirts killed 17 migrant workers who had been living in makeshift quarters at a market warehouse, most of them from economically struggling former Soviet republics in Central Asia.
