A three-story factory owned by a major Taiwanese electronics company collapsed yesterday in eastern Thailand, killing at least eight workers and injuring 57 others, officials said.
Police said about 100 female night-shift staff were working at the Delta Electronics Thailand factory when it collapsed at about 4am yesterday.
Anusorn Mutahid, a company executive, said six women workers and a man were killed while three women were unaccounted for. Police Lieutenant General Pichit Kruanthechkup, who headed the rescue operation, said 57 female workers were injured.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Pichit told reporters that it appears the roof of the building cracked and tore apart under the load of some 30 tonnes of air-conditioning equipment installed on it.
Hundreds of rescue workers and police burrowed into the collapsed factory as morning shift workers arrived to discover many of their colleagues trapped under ceiling mortar, iron beams and shattered air-conditioning equipment.
"I heard a loud crack and suddenly everything was falling down over our heads," Napa Nanta, 18, a worker who suffered cuts on her head, said from her hospital bed.
Delta Electronics Thailand, a listed company on the Thai stock exchange, is a subsidiary of Taiwan's Delta Electronics (
The computer-parts manufacturer is one of the few success stories in the depressed electronics industry and had jumped into the market for liquid-crystal-display screens by clinching a deal to supply flat-screen monitors to Japan's Sony Corp.
Delta was expected to earn at least US$200 million in sales of LCD monitors this year, up from US$10 million last year.
Its facilities are located in Bang Pu in Samut Prakarn province, about 30km east of Bangkok.
The 4,500m2 collapsed unit is part of a sprawling complex of five Delta factories that employ 14,000 people. Most of the factory workers are women who work in an around-the-clock operation.
Industry Minister Suriya Juengrungruangkit, who inspected the site, ordered the temporary suspension of work at the collapsed unit but said the other four units would continue to operate.
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