"What will Rs 10 lakh do? Where will my children go? Will my children get a parent back?"

Naseem Ansari says he is struggling to get any information from public authorities on Asiya since the fire broke out in the factory in Mundka on May 13 evening. Photo: Anumeha Yadav

On May 13, last Friday, a fire broke out in a four-storey building in Mundka, Delhi. Though it was on paper a residential building, and lacked a factory license and a no-objection certificate from the fire department, on three of its four floors, more than a hundred workers were employed by the lessor Cofe Impex Private Limited, a logistics firm, to assemble and pack electronic equipments such as CCTV cameras, WiFi routers and circuit adapters.

On one of the worst industrial accidents in the national capital, 27 are confirmed dead, of whom 21 were women workers, reported the Indian Express, and of the 29 who remained missing till Monday, 24 are women.

At the accident site in Mundka, Naseem Ansari, a 33-year-old migrant worker from Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh, continued to search for his wife Asiya, who had taken a job for the first time assembling CCTV cameras at the factory just six months earlier. Ansari recounted that Asiya had sought employment to support their two daughters’ school education in the pandemic after her husband lost two fingers on his left hand in an industrial injury in a different factory also in Mundka. Till Monday, at least 19 bodies at hospitals in Delhi remained unidentified, charred beyond recognition in the devastating fire.

Below is Naseem’s first-person account of their lives and the last few days, as told to Anumeha Yadav.

My name is Naseem Ansari. I operate a power press in a factory making parts for automobiles, such as steering wheels. On Friday, I was at work in the factory when one of my co-workers told me a building has caught fire in a residential area nearby. But when I finished work at 7 pm and reached the area, I saw the building my wife worked in was on fire. I did not know what to do. I looked around, listened to the onlookers who were talking, I asked them and tried to find out what is going on. But it was impossible to get any correct news on what had happened to those inside. Asiya was not allowed to keep her mobile on her while she was inside the factory.

A day after the fire, fire brigade staff at the site clearing out the area and debris. Photo: Anumeha Yadav

I am 33 years old, and Asiya was a year or so younger to me. I came to Delhi 15 years ago, in 2007, from Gorakhpur to look for work. Asiya and I had got married in 2009. Her village Pola, near Paradi Bazaar, is in Deoria, near my village in Gorakhpur. Both our fathers work as mistris in the construction sector. We have two small children, daughters who are eight and 10 years old.

Asiya studied till class VIII, and she had started working in the factory around six months ago. There were three floors. The top floor was the biggest, there could even be up to a hundred workers on the top floor sometimes, and the floors below held fewer workers. The upper or third floor was where workers assembled final parts of routers and adapters, and on the lower floor was work on CCTV cameras. There was a checking department which packed and scanned the products digitally; in the middle floor was a store and office. Asiya worked in the packing department.

At the entrance to the factory, near the staircase, workers’ mobile phones were kept. I don’t know why the company did this, but the supervisor, Pandey ji, used to instruct workers to leave their mobile phones out.

This was the first time Asiya had started going outside the home to work. On a Friday last year, I lost the top of my index and middle fingers of my left hand in a hydraulic press machine accident in the factory I worked in earlier. That company, also here in Mundka in west Delhi, manufactured television satellite dishes for major companies such as Tata and Airtel. The employer paid for my medical treatment at Jeevan Jyoti, a private hospital, but they gave me no compensation at all for the loss of my fingers and the loss of my livelihood for nearly a year after the injury.

When I first arrived in Delhi too, I had worked briefly in a power press in Mundka. Then I worked in a medical store for two to three years. But the employer retrenched me, saying we cannot afford so many workers. Then I worked in the shoe line, though that did not pay even Rs 7,000 per month. Then I joined this factory, Cofe Impex. They would make us work up and down the three floors, and the pay was only Rs 7,500, with which it was difficult to support three family members. I left and again joined a power press, where I lost two fingers in the crush accident last year.

Ansari lost two of his fingers partially in a crush injury in a hydraulic press while working in a factory that manufactured TV dish equipment last year and was denied compensation by his employer while he was laid off during his recovery. Photo: Anumeha Yadav

That company where I had got the crush injury has since shut down, it has disappeared. Many other workers too lost their fingers in that hydraulic press. But I believe because of the force of bad-dua, my curses for what they did to my hand, today that company has shut down. There is a lock on it and it had to be sold for peanuts.

We pay Rs 2,500 monthly rent, and we had to pay for our daughters’ education which was all online in the pandemic. We needed the money. We knew about this factory, because before Asiya, I had worked in this same factory for four months two years ago, physically loading the packed CCTV and “hi-fi” (Wifi) routers.

The owners of the firm had pasted a bill on a wall saying “Helpers needed”. So I went and worked there. They hire on a temporary basis, they stick bills asking for workers when needed during more production. When I worked at this factory which now caught fire, the firm paid Rs 6,000 a month to women workers and Rs 7,500 to male workers. The shift ran from 10 am to 7 pm and they gave a weekly off. If women went in, they often assigned them in packing and assembling, and if it was a male worker, then they were often assigned loading work.

I worked for less than four months doing this loading work for the firm because they paid only Rs 7,500, which is not much. I looked for other jobs and went to work in the power press machine, even though it is risky work and can cause injuries, because it pays more, around Rs 11,000 a month.

Here too at Cofe Impex Private Limited, the work was not easy, assembling and packing 1,000 pieces or more a day, running up and down the floors. But here the work shift was 10 am to 7 pm. The shift runs in a way that allows one also to look after one’s home. As the work began at 10 am, it was suitable for many women workers. A person looking after their household and family can reach the factory for duty at 10 am after finishing the house work, feeding everyone, getting their children ready and sending them to school.

This is why many women like my wife worked here, even when they paid only Rs 6,000-6,500 till two months back [this is 2.5 times less than Delhi’s minimum wage for industrial workers, between Rs 16,064/month (Rs 618/day) and Rs 17,693/a month (Rs 681/day)]. Many young women came to work here from Peeragarhi, Ranikheda, Bakarwale, from so many places. Some men worked along with them too.

I have photos of Asiya on a smartphone I had bought while online classes were going on in the pandemic. I bought one mobile for both of them and it no longer works, it is in for repair. With two children and one parent in paid work, how would that work? I do not have even an ID or a photograph of Asiya on me right now as police took whatever I brought here from me, for identification.

Hundreds of pieces of wifi equipment of the brand Oxigen and broken CCTV camera in the charred remains on the ground around the premises leased by the firm Cofe Impex Private Limited. Photo: Anumeha Yadav

The night of the fire, I returned the site at midnight after feeding some packed poori-sabzi to my daughters. When I reached the site again, someone told me (chief minister) Arvind Kejriwal had visited the site and left. Then more VIPs reached, Aazad Singh (former mayor and a leader of the Bharatiya Janta Party), the brother of former Delhi chief minister Sahib Singh Verma, I begged at his feet too. I am trying to ask whoever visits this factory site as well. I am begging them, the district magistrate and other officials when they visit, but they are all preoccupied.

After switching on the cooler for my daughters to sleep and leaving them with in my neighbours’ care, I spent the whole night at the site waiting for some information about Asiya. I wish I could find out something about Asiya, just any bit of information about where she is, if she is alright.

I went to all three hospitals [where the injured were taken] – Sanjay Gandhi Hospital, then Sonia Hospital, another hospital in Son Park – but I could get no information. I fainted and fell here in the afternoon heat waiting outside the building today. I am trying to take care of my daughters, so that they stay well. I don’t want them to feel any shock or distress. For now, I have told them your mother is in the hospital. I want to protect my children from panic and tension. Main bhi apni himmat nahi tod raha hoon [I am trying very hard to not break my own resolve right now].

The Delhi government has announced it will compensate us with Rs 10 lakh if our family member has died. What will 10 lakh do? Where will my children go? Will my children get a parent back? Will they get love? They are looking for their mother. Where should they look for their mother? They have not told us anything about Asiya yet. For how long should I keep sitting here, searching for her?

Both my daughters were born after a cesarean section surgery, we spent a lot of money on the operations – Rs 1.5 lakh on each. I spent all my life’s earning on these surgeries so that my wife and my children stayed safe.

We spend Rs 2,500 on rent monthly. We have no house of our own. No one listens to us, no one cares. The government gives to those who already have houses and property, not to the poor. First we heard “Yogi Baba”, now we are told “Bulldozer Baba”, they are demolishing homes they call illegal. When they cannot give anyone anything, why are they taking away our existing homes?

When Modi ji won the Lok Sabha seat from Varanasi, what did he say? He asked, why do you migrate from Uttar Pradesh to Ahmedabad, Mumbai? Why do children from UP’s villages go to work in the city? He said, “’Tumhare gaon mein hum chalwayenge, har ek factory basayenge.’ Kya basa diya? Aaj basa diyaa na. Sab mar gaya. Duniya mar gaya. Bache marey. Sab marey. Kya cheez basaye hain? [‘I will ensure and nurture commercial enterprises in your villages, in every village in Uttar Pradesh, there will be a factory.’ What did he nurture? Today we have seen what they created. Minors have died. So many have died. It is like the world is coming to an end. What have they (the powerful) created?]”

As told to Anumeha Yadav.