Labor organizations and social activists staged a protest outside a lubricant company where three workers were killed and one was injured during maintenance on a waste oil tank, Indian media reported. The protesters demanded compensation for the families of the men and improvements to standards to protect workers’ safety.
On Sunday, a worker entered the tank for maintenance. After he stopped responding to colleagues, two others went to retrieve him but they too appeared to lose consciousness. A fourth man climbed in the tank but was quickly extracted by other workers.
All four were taken to a hospital where three of them succumbed to fume inhalation and died.
Police said the management of Sagarshri Lubricants Pvt. Ltd., a lubricant blender in Madhya Pradesh, kept the incident hidden from authorities for several hours and transported the injured men to a private hospital in a pickup truck.
Leaders of workers’ unions said fires, gas leaks and other accidents have become common in such units, media reported.
Health and Safety Department Director Namita Tiwari visited the factory and confirmed negligence on the part of the company.
Tension in the town was already high when earlier in the year 337 tons of toxic waste from the world’s deadliest gas leak arrived there for processing. The waste was from the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, site of a 1984 accident that exposed half a million people to a highly toxic gas, eventually causing more than 23,000 deaths and serious health maladies for another 150,000. Concerns about exposure to industrial chemicals were galvanized by the toll of the incident, what many deemed as a lack of company accountability and failure for more than a quarter century to clean up the site.