Last month, the world watched in horror as thousands of garment workers in Bangladesh lay trapped under the wreckage of their factory. As reports began to trickle through that factory employees had been forced to continue their jobs, even as they pointed out the imminent danger, shock turned to anger, and mass demonstrations against the companies that engage such apparently morality free owners to make their garments.
In total, 2500 individuals were injured when the walls of their factory collapsed, and over a thousand killed. The incident prompted many in the west to re-examine their practices of mass buying super cheap clothes as the human toll of the production of these goods was laid bare on rolling news broadcasts. According to report of the disaster, an additional three stories were added to the building illegally, which is thought to have contributed to the collapse. The site’s owner, Sohel Rana, has been charged over the incident. UK retailers Primark, H&M and Zara were found to use factory for their wares, swiftly acted to sign up to new health and safety legislation to ensure the disaster won’t be repeated.
Bangladeshi Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus said of the disaster, “The crack in Rana Plaza that caused the collapse of the building has only shown us that if we don’t face up to the cracks in our state systems, we as a nation will get lost in the debris of the collapse.”
“The crack in Rana Plaza that caused the collapse of the building has only shown us that if we don’t face up to the cracks in our state systems, we as a nation will get lost in the debris of the collapse.”
Following this wave of protest, the Bangladeshi government is attempting to do just that, starting with an emergency survey of the regions 3000 clothes shops and factories. The results of this investigation to date make for grim reading- up to sixty percent of Bangladesh garment factories are considered vulnerable, and are thought to be at risk of collapsing. Professor Mehedi Ansary, who lead the investigation, said, “This doesn’t mean they will collapse in the next week or month, but it does mean that to leave them unchanged would be irresponsible.”
He added that it is likely that there are “lots of very vulnerable [factories] that we don’t know about”, but that the aim of the survey was “not to create panic”.
