Punjab labour minister seeks report on Lahore bakery fire

Punjab Minister for Labour and Human Resources Muhammad Manshaullah Butt has sought a report from the Director General Labour Punjab on a fire at a bakery factory in Lahore, the Associated Press of Pakistan reported.

APP said the fire was reportedly caused by gas leakage in the baking area. Its headline described the blaze as fatal, but the report gave no death toll, no number of injured workers, no date for the fire and no indication of where in Lahore the factory stands.

APP said the minister had taken strict notice of the incident. The report named only the factory, described as a bakery, and the office from which the minister wants an answer. It did not give the owner's name, the size of the workforce or the time of day the fire broke out.

APP did not say by what date the director general must reply, or whether labour inspectors had visited the premises before the blaze. Skardu Times could not independently confirm the cause of the fire or the number of dead on Sunday night.

UrduPoint also reported a fire in Lahore, at a plastic pellets factory on Multan Road. Its report, published as a headline, gave no casualty figure and did not say when the fire occurred.

Neither outlet said whether the two fires were connected. Nothing in the two reports shows they are the same incident: the addresses differ, and one building is described as a bakery, the other as a plastics plant.

No statement from the factory's management, the Lahore district administration, the Punjab police or the fire service appeared in either report, and no fire service estimate of the damage was given.

The provincial labour ministry is the department that enforces working conditions in Punjab's factories, and the labour directorate the minister has asked for a report sits under it.