An incident took place at an apparel unit in Anakapalle district of Andhra Pradesh and over 100 women working there felt sick after inhaling some poisonous gas whose source and cause are yet in mystery.
It was the second such incident as another incident took place at Brandix India Apparel Company (BIAC) at Atchutapuram in less than two months after the last one left around 300 women unwell.
More than 4,000 women working at BIAC are unwell. Those affected women complained of nausea, headache, cough and suffocation. Some of the women fainted and were treated at the factory initially before being taken to nearby hospitals. Those conditions are said to be stable. In the last such incident on June 3, some of the 300 women who fell ill were pregnant. An inquiry was carried out but there is no word so far on what caused that gas leak.
On Tuesday, Brandix India Apparel mentioned in a statement, “some workers had complained of an unpleasant odour and were taken to hospital as a precaution. The safety and well-being of our associates is of utmost importance and we have evacuated all of them. The affected associates are in a stable condition.”
Soon Anakapalle police chief Gowthami Sali inspected the unit and said the cause of the incident is yet to be found. Earlier this year in June, a private lab, Porus Laboratories Private Ltd that is located inside an Andhra government-run industrial complex, asked to stop the operations after a gas leak that affected staff at an adjacent apparel unit, Seeds Intimate Apparel, in Visakhapatnam’s Marripalem area.
