Anger on streets as Bangladesh building toll passes 300

[Sun Jian]

Anger on streets as Bangladesh building toll passes 300

By Ruma Paul and Serajul Quadir
DHAKA | Fri Apr 26, 2013 10:48am EDT

(Reuters) - Bangladesh textile workers vented their anger on Friday, burning cars and clashing with police, as the death toll passed 300 following the collapse of a building housing factories that made low-cost garments for Western brands.

Miraculously rescuers were still pulling people alive from the rubble - 72 since daybreak following 41 found in the same room overnight - two days after the eight-storey building collapsed on the outskirts of the capital, Dhaka.

But there were fears that hundreds of people were still trapped in the wreckage of the building, which officials said had been built illegally without the correct building permits.

"Some people are still alive under the rubble and we are hoping to rescue them," said deputy fire services director Mizanur Rahman.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said she had ordered the arrest of the owners of the building and of the five factories that occupied it.

Army spokesman Shahinur Islam said the death toll had reached 304 and H. T. Imam, an adviser to the prime minister, said it could exceed 350.

Anger over the working conditions of Bangladesh's 3.6 million garment workers, the overwhelming majority of them women, has grown steadily since the disaster, with thousands taking to the streets to protest on Friday.

About 2,350 people have been rescued, at least half of them injured, from the remains of the building in the commercial suburb of Savar, about 30 km (20 miles) from Dhaka.

An industry official has said 3,122 people, most of them female garment workers, had been in the Rana Plaza building despite warnings that it was structurally unsafe.

WRONG PERMIT, ILLEGAL FLOORS

Emdadul Islam, chief engineer of state run Capital Development Authority (CDA), said that the owner of the building had not received the proper building consent, obtaining a permit for a five-storey building from the local municipality, which did not have the authority to grant it.

"Only CDA can give such approval," he said. "We are trying to get the original design from the municipality, but since the concerned official is in hiding we cannot get it readily."

Furthermore, another three storeys had been added illegally, he said. "Savar is not an industrial zone, and for that no factory can be housed in Rana Plaza," Islam told Reuters.

Bangladesh is the second-largest exporter of garments in the world but many factories remained closed for a second day on Friday, with garment workers protesting against poor conditions and demanding the owners of the building and the factories it housed face harsh punishment.

Police and witnesses said protesters set fire to a number of vehicles and damaged other garment factories.

Dhaka District police chief Habibur Rahman identified the owner of the Rana Plaza building as Mohammed Sohel Rana, a leader of the ruling Awami League's youth front.

Imam, the prime minister's adviser, said Rana had "vanished into thin air".

"People are asking for his head, which is quite natural. This time we are not going to spare anybody," Imam said.

STRING OF FATAL INCIDENTS

Wednesday's collapse was the third major industrial incident in five months in Bangladesh. In November, a fire at the Tazreen Fashion factory on the outskirts of Dhaka killed 112 people.

"This incident is devastating for us as we haven't recovered from the shock of Tazreen fire yet," said Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith, who visited the site on Friday.

Such incidents have raised serious questions about worker safety and low wages in Bangladesh and could taint the poor South Asian country's reputation as a producer of low-cost products and services.

North American and European chains, including British retailer Primark and Canada's Loblaw, said they were supplied by factories in the Rana Plaza building.

Mohammad Atiqul Islam, president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), said the proprietors of the five factories inside the building had ignored the association's warning not to open on Wednesday after cracks had been seen in the building the day before.

"We asked not to open the factories and told them we will send our engineer, and until you get the green signal don't open the factories," Islam told Reuters.

"But, unfortunately, they violated our instructions," he said. A bank in the building did close on Wednesday after the warning.

PRAYERS, MOURNING

Savar residents and rescuers dropped bottled water and food on Thursday night to people who called out from between floors. Nearby, relatives identified their dead among dozens of corpses wrapped in cloth on the veranda of a school.

Special prayers were offered for the dead, injured and missing at mosques, temples and pagodas across Bangladesh on Friday.

Ten labor groups called for a strike on Sunday by workers at garment factories across the country.

Sixty percent of Bangladesh's garment exports go to Europe. The United States takes 23 percent and Canada takes 5 percent.

Primark and Loblaw, as well as PWT, a Danish company whose Texman brand clothes were also made in factories at Rana Plaza, operate under codes of conduct aimed at ensuring products are made in good working conditions.

The largest factory, New Wave Style, which listed many European and North American retailers as its customers, occupied the sixth and seventh floors, documents seen by Reuters showed.

(Additional reporting by Anis Ahmed in Dhaka, John Chalmers in New Delhi, Jessica Wohl and Nivedita Bhattacharjee in Chicago, Solarina Ho in Toronto, Robert Hertz in Madrid and Mette Kronholm Fraende in Copenhagen; Writing by Paul Tait; Editing by Alex Richardson)

 

[Sun Jian]

Updated April 25, 2013, 5:06 p.m. ET

Collapsed Factory Was Built Without Permit

Death Toll Climbs, More Rescued at Bangladesh Disaster Site Where Owner Lacked Authorization From Safety Agency

By SYED ZAIN AL-MAHMOOD and TOM WRIGHT

A survivor is lifted from the rubble of the Rana Plaza factory complex in Savar, Bangladesh, on Thursday, a day after the building's collapse.

DHAKA, Bangladesh—The factory complex that collapsed this week in this country's deadliest industrial accident was built without proper permission on unstable land, Dhaka city officials said, as the official death toll climbed to 275 and rescue workers continued to pull survivors from the rubble.

Rescuers digging with drills, shovels and their bare hands said many dead bodies were believed to still be under the wreckage of Rana Plaza, the eight-story building that collapsed Wednesday. Relatives of the missing, handkerchiefs to their faces to block out the smell, searched rows of corpses laid out in a nearby school.

Public anger over the collapse and reports of regulatory issues drew attention to the difficulty large Western retailers face in making sure their suppliers operate under safe conditions.

Retailers rely largely on trade association initiatives, independent third-party assessors and their own in-house auditors to monitor suppliers in Bangladesh, the second-largest clothing exporter after China.

But such efforts can fail to uncover some dangers: At least two garment factories at Rana Plaza had passed international labor and safety standard audits under a European trade organization that addressed specific safety concerns at the factories but didn't assess the stability of the building that housed them.

Hundreds of thousands of garment workers from the areas around Dhaka went on strike Thursday to protest poor safety standards, bringing production to a virtual standstill.

The owner of Rana Plaza, local politician Sohel Rana, didn't obtain mandatory permits from the municipal agency that oversees building safety in the greater Dhaka area, said Sheikh Abdul Mannan, a senior official with the agency. The building, in Savar, a commercial hub just north of Dhaka, "did not receive planning permission," Mr. Mannan said. "It could and should have been demolished."

Mr. Rana instead obtained permission from Savar's mayor to build the commercial complex, which housed five textile factories, a bank and shops. Mr. Mannan said the mayor had no authority to allow the construction.

Mr. Rana hasn't spoken publicly since the accident. Attempts to reach him to comment weren't successful.

Savar Mayor Refayet Ullah told The Wall Street Journal that his office had issued a permit to Mr. Rana without seeking required permission from the Dhaka building-safety agency.

Mr. Ullah said the Dhaka agency took too long to issue permits at a time when Bangladesh's garment industry was booming. "Hundreds of factories in this area have been built with local council permission," he said.

He said Mr. Rana was a prominent citizen who owned other buildings in the area, all built with the go-ahead of the local council. Posters showing a smiling Mr. Rana line the walls on both sides of the road outside Rana Plaza.

Mr. Rana built Rana Plaza in 2007, draining water from a pond and filling it with concrete foundations, according to local residents. Such land is prevalent in Bangladesh, which has many low-lying, swampy areas.

Such land is unstable and can be dangerous if foundations aren't properly built, said Mr. Mannan of the building-safety agency.

Bangladesh's government has promised to take action to improve factory safety. In March, the ministry of labor and employment, international labor unions and the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association adopted a national action plan on fire safety. Plans included modernizing equipment, overhauling fire-safety and building-safety laws, and increasing inspections.

Canadian retailer Loblaw Cos., which said workers in the complex were making clothes for its Joe Fresh clothing line, said its factory-monitoring system doesn't check for building construction or integrity. The company plans to expand the scope of its factory audits, it said Thursday.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. WMT +0.50% said it hadn't authorized its suppliers to use factories in Rana Plaza. Wal-Mart was listed as a customer on the website of Ether Tex Ltd., a garment factory that was operating on the fifth floor of the building. Wal-Mart said contacts between its suppliers and Ether Tex predated the factory's presence in the building.

Two Bangladeshi factories that were in the building, and suffered worker fatalities in its collapse, had cleared an audit by the Business Social Compliance Initiative, which was set up a decade ago by the Brussels-based Foreign Trade Association, a body that comprises some 1,000 European retailers such as Adidas AG, ADS.XE -0.59% Esprit Holdings Ltd. 0330.HK 0.00% and Hugo Boss BOSS.XE +0.04% AG.

The group said its auditors aren't building engineers and didn't take the state of the building into account when they conducted the checks. It is up to local authorities to ensure that construction and infrastructure are secure.

"It's very important not to expect too much from the social audit," said Lorenz Berzau, BSCI's managing director. "BSCI and other initiatives contribute to improve the situation," he said. "But it's a long way we have to go."

Workers' groups complain such checks have failed to remedy poor safety standards. Over 700 people have died in factory fires in Bangladesh in recent years, and building collapses had already caused scores of deaths here before Wednesday's accident.

On Tuesday, garment workers were evacuated from Rana Plaza after a major crack appeared on the exterior wall. Mr. Rana told a meeting later that day that the building would stand "for another hundred years," according to people who attended.

Garment-factory officials asked workers to return on Wednesday. Some workers said they were threatened with docked pay if they didn't comply. Soon after, the building collapsed, with several thousand workers inside.

Early Friday, Bangladeshi authorities said 275 bodies had been recovered from the collapsed building, the Associated Press reported. Brig. Gen. Mohammed Siddiqul Alam Shikder said 61 survivors have been rescued since Thursday afternoon, the AP added.

Sharmeen Begum's daughter Sumi was in the building when it collapsed, and managed to phone her mother around 24 hours later, pleading for help before the line went dead.

Ms. Begum joined an anxious crowd outside the wreckage on Thursday, clutching a photograph of her daughter. "My daughter is alive inside!" she told rescue workers. "Please save her!"

John Sifton, Asia Advocacy Director at Human Rights Watch, said the tragedy highlighted concerns about labor rights in Bangladesh. "Had one or more of the Rana Plaza factories been unionized, its workers would have been in a position to refuse to enter the building on Wednesday morning, and thus save their lives," he said.

Labor-rights activists said laws remain weak and implementation uneven in a country where factory owners, many of whom are also local politicians or members of Parliament, maintain political clout. No factory owner has been charged over a worker death in Bangladesh.

"At least 33 members of the current Parliament own garment businesses." said Babul Akter, president of the Bangladesh Garment and Industrial Workers Federation. "That's more than 10% of seats. There are repeated instances of MPs linked to the garment industry blocking stricter legislation."

Shahriar Alam, a member of Parliament and the managing director of Renaissance Group, a large garment manufacturer, said this wasn't the case. "It's not true that the labor law is weak," he said.

The BSCI said Bangladesh had adequate laws governing the safety of buildings, but that the laws weren't properly implemented.

—Shelly Banjo
contributed to this article.

 

[Sun Jian]

Footage shot by a local television channel shows large cracks in the walls of the Rana Plaza building on the outskirts of Dhaka, Bangladesh, before it collapsed on Wednesday. Local police said factory owners appeared to have ignored warnings not to allow workers into the eight-storey building after cracks were discovered on Tuesday


<iframe src="http://embedded-video.guardianapps.co.uk/?a=false&u=/world/video/2013/apr/26/bangladesh-cracks-walls-before-building-collapsed-video" frameborder="0" height="397" width="460"></iframe>
<!-- End of guardian embedded video -->