Putian Shoe Enterprises Fire Engulf 37 Lives Behind

On the night of October 21st, a fire in Feida's shoe upper processing factory in wat Shi Town, Xiuyu, Putian, consumed 37 lives and 19 others were injured.

What is revealed behind the tragedy is not only the hidden dangers of the small family shops that are everywhere, but also the helpless and challenges faced by the pformation and upgrading of the labor-intensive industries such as Putian's shoemaking.

A minibus ride from downtown Putian does not take 1 hours to Xiuyu.

Because it is the location of the district government, the town is still prosperous, and the "2 yuan" started to "rub" like dragonflies in the rain days ago.

Feida shoe processing factory is located in an alley beside the parking lot in the west end of Xinpu street in North PU. The five storey commercial and residential buildings are smoked and black. There are several bicycles and motorcycles burned in front of the door.

Although the fire has been going on for two whole days, the clean-up work is continuing. The small restaurants and Internet bars have been closed, and more than ten firefighters are in and out of the burnt ruins.

A policeman involved in the martial law told reporters that they were looking for clues to help investigate the cause of the accident.

The most used word was "nightmares" when the witnesses in the vicinity described the scene to reporters that night. More witnesses said they suspected the time of fire and casualties. "The fire broke out at 21:30, and there were hundreds of people working in it, and two bags of light loaded corpses were left," a woman who did not want to be named told reporters.

Some witnesses complained about the fire rescue: "the first fire brigade in Xiuyu district was broken."

However, Putian fire brigade refused to accept this reporter's interview.

Even the survivors can not give the overall description of the fire.

"When the fire came up from the first floor, we didn't know that it was too late to run quickly."

The memory of Chen Xiujuan (pseudonym) lying in the intensive care unit of the 95 hospital has been somewhat vague. "The cloth that just came from the morning is stacked on the first floor, full of room".

According to her introduction, the workers who worked overtime on the two floor and the third floor were surrounded by thick black smoke in the twinkling of an eye. In addition, the electricity was blackened. Everyone was in a panic. They were crowded on the stairs and wanted to run down, but the fire was so heavy that they couldn't get out.

In desperation, Chen Xiujuan jumped from the balcony of the two floor to a wall next to him and jumped to the ground. Although the knee of his right leg was broken into a comminuted fracture, he picked up his life.

Then, four or five people jumped from the two floor. They and dozens of people who ran to the top of the building became survivors of the fire, while more workers were quickly swallowed up by fire and smoke.

In the 95 hospital, the reporter saw a "10. 21" fire casualty list. Among the 19 injured workers, most of them were burn and inhalation burns. Up to now, 3 critically injured and 2 seriously injured.

Feida shoe processing factory is a typical "three in one" (warehousing, production, living together) place.

The three apartments on the first floor were opened to store the upper fabric, the two or three floor was the production workshop, the four floor was the owner's office, the five floor was the worker's dormitory, and there was only one staircase up and down.

The roof is covered with a simple shed for the kitchen, and the five floor workers sometimes sleep here.

A woman worker who once worked in a shoe factory told reporters that the five floor was a small room separated by wooden boards. "There are five or six rooms, seven or eight people in each room. Sometimes they can't squeeze to live in the kitchen."

As for the number of workers in the shoe factory, no one can tell the five women workers interviewed by reporters.

For most workers, there is even an algorithm for wages.

Although they are charged by pieces, they only know how much they have done a day, but they do not know the price of each item. "Once asked the boss, but he said that the price of each process is different, so it can not be counted".

In Chen Xiujuan's home, the reporter saw a small book that she used to record the amount of labor. "In May 31st, two floor instructions: 645 pairs of shoes and tongue; June 1st, two floor instructions: 1021 pairs of sticky shoes cloth".

Chen Xiujuan can get around 1000 yuan a month, "it's a high salary, and the average person is seven hundred or eight hundred yuan".

The husband died a few years ago, that is, this 1000 yuan, which will bear the basic life of a family of four.

The youngest son is 18 years old, and has never found a suitable job after dropping out of school. In his eyes, mother "goes to work at dawn every day until more than 22 o'clock in the evening, sometimes until midnight, and only does not work overtime on Saturday.

Three meals are from the home with a little rice, boiled water with a pickled cabbage to eat.

Even though the factory was only 10 minutes away from home, Chen Xiujuan still chose to live in the factory most of the time, because he had been robbed at home in the middle of last year.

According to a female worker of Feida shoe factory, there are more than 100 workers working in factories. Most of them come from the hometown of owner Chen Zong Fei, Xiuyu's Dai Dai Town, many of whom are relatives of the boss.

However, in the village of Dai Tian in the town of Dai tou, almost every villagers shook their heads vigilant when they heard the name of Chen Zongfei, and said they did not know.

A villager who did not want to be named admitted that there was a man in the village. "But no one dared to say such a thing."

The village secretary told reporters that several "villagers" were killed in the accident.

Asked about Chen Zongfei's past experience, he said "it is not clear".

According to the information released at a news conference held in October 22nd, Feida's shoe processing factory was registered in December 4, 2003, and in 2004, it was produced in the commercial town of tippu, north of pun stone, because the "three in one" processing plant was banned.

But according to the villagers in the nearby village of Lin Cuo, the shoe factory was banned and did not disappear, but had been renting the village chief's house for processing and production until it moved to the present place only in September last year.

Huang Shubin, the operator registered in the Xiuyu industrial and commercial bureau, is Chen Zongfei's wife. He used to be a temporary worker in the post office.

A woman worker told reporters that Chen Zongfei's factory was more than this place. The couple were seldom in the factory, leaving only two "heads" as supervisors. "Overtime in the evening, for fear of our laziness, they sometimes locked the doors on the first floor and the four floor, and then went dancing."

Chen Zongfei and his wife, who were not in the factory that night, were quickly arrested by the local procuratorate.

In a compensation agreement signed by three parties, including the local government, Mr. Chen Zongfei and his family members, the compensation for each of the deceased was rated at 162666 yuan.

Up to the Ministry of public security, the SAIC and other state ministries and commissions, the relevant leaders in Putian and Xiuyu district have said, "we should learn from this accident and investigate the" three in one "processing field.

A government official who did not want to be named said, "this accident is also a wake-up call for the" three in one "action to delay the effect. If we do not investigate it thoroughly, it will affect the overall development of Putian.

In fact, in April of this year, the Putian Municipal People's government issued the document No. 63 of Puzheng Office [2007], and established the work plan for the comprehensive fire control of the three in one building.

In the plan drawn up by the municipal public security fire brigade, the renovation operation planned to end by the end of the year will be divided into five stages, from September 1st to November 30th.

Public information also shows that "the wat Shi Town People's Government in May 19, 2007 and September 18th organized personnel to carry out administrative enforcement of Feida shoe processing plant, and issued two rectification instructions, 6 hidden dangers."

A staff member of the municipal public security fire detachment told reporters that the "three in one" action has been carried out almost every year, but the work is really difficult to advance. After all, it is not a department's final say, it involves all aspects of public security, fire protection, industry and commerce, taxation, safety supervision, electricity and so on.

The "three in one" processing plant is mostly a small family workshop which is engaged in clothing and shoemaking. The phenomenon of blossom everywhere stems from the rapid development of the labor-intensive industries in the local area.

In Putian, the main industries of each district are different, and the emphasis of "three in one" renovation will change accordingly.

The plan shows that "Licheng District focuses on clothing and footwear industry, and Xianyou County focuses on woodcarving and handicraft industry. Hanjiang District focuses on woodwork, clothing and footwear industry."

The Xiuyu area was "less than three in one" and was not listed separately.

Cai Jinhui, President of Putian Footwear Association, also told reporters that "wat Shi town has more business in building materials, and shoemaking is not the main industry."

But for the whole city of Putian, the output value of shoemaking industry is nearly 20 billion yuan per year, accounting for nearly 30% of the total industrial output value of the whole city.

According to Cai Jinhui, the history of shoe making in Putian has a long history. As early as in the old society, there were many workshops on hand made shoes. The shoe association established in the 50s of last century laid a good foundation. In 80s, various international famous brands set up factories in Putian.

After more than ten years of material processing, a large number of independent brands began to rise in the late 90s, and Putian began to reinvigorate the "Chinese shoe city".

At the same time, due to increased production capacity, there is no "three no" workshops without industrial and commercial, environmental protection and fire permits.

Up to now, there are about 200 regular shoe making enterprises in Putian, far less than the number of small factories.

In addition to the production of unlicensed fake shoes, raw materials processing has become the main business of family small workshops.

The two season of winter and summer is the peak season of shoemaking industry. Due to the lack of labor, regular enterprises often outsource the technology with relatively low vamp to small workshops.

Although it may only be half a year's activity in a year, the owners of the workshop will earn a lot of money because of a series of costs, such as taxes and employee insurance.

However, the struggle for labor resources makes the contradiction between regular enterprises and small workshops becoming more and more intense.

Cai Jinhui, who has been engaged in shoe making industry for more than 20 years, recalls that since twenty-first Century, the contradiction between labor shortage has begun to appear.

Since 2004, due to the exemption from agricultural taxes and the rise of processing industries in Chengdu, Chongqing and Jiangxi, the number of outsiders working in Putian shoe factories has been significantly reduced. In addition, the growth of Quanzhou's processing industry has taken away part of the workforce. "The factory's rate of up to 80% is good."

During the peak season of production, small workshops will dig into large enterprises, and a factory brand will be sold to 1000 yuan.

"Because of low production costs, wages will be relatively higher than one hundred or two hundred yuan, which is very attractive to older women who are older, not only with more money, but also closer to home and loosely managed."

Shortly after the "10. 21" fire, Putian's vice mayor, Nguyen Jun, summed up the five major hazards of "small workshop": disrupting the market order, destroying Putian's image, disrupting the employment market, destroying social stability and losing a lot of taxes and taxes.

According to Cai Jinhui, the government plans to regulate the industrial layout of Putian's footwear industry in the process of regulating the "three in one" process. "We should focus on supporting about 30 large enterprises, retaining forty or fifty medium-sized enterprises, and the rest of the small businesses and small workshops will be converted to affiliated factories and converted into parts production."