Kuwait Fire: Good Wages but Poor Work Conditions – An Indian Migrant's Conundrum
Indians constitute 21% of Kuwait and 30% of its total workforce. Yet many live in poor conditions.
By: VARSHA SRIRAM
Out of the 49 people killed on Wednesday, 12 June, after a fire broke out in an apartment building in Kuwait, 45 were Indians.
The seven-storey building housed nearly 200 people in the Mangaf area, south of Kuwait City, an area heavily populated with migrant workers. Most of them worked as engineers and technicians for a private construction firm called NBTC Group, which has KG Abraham, a businessman from Kerala, as its managing director.
A majority of the deceased aged between 20 and 50 years were from Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, and Uttar Pradesh. The Kerala government on Thursday, 13 June, confirmed that 24 of the deceased were from the state.
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Why do Indian workers migrate to Kuwait in search of employment? What are the jobs they take up? And what are their living conditions like? The Quint explains.
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