The
Rana Plaza disaster in 2012
claimed
the lives of more than 1,100 workers,
injuring
more than 2,500. It provided the catalyst for more than 200 global
brands and retailers to come together to address factory safety
issues. However, actual progress in remedying the safety issues
revealed by these inspections has been disappointing. Only 79
factories, less than 4 percent, out of acknowledged 2,300 factories
where their brands’ garments are being produced have completed
their corrective action plans. This is an insufficient number. In
2015, the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human
Rights mapped more
than 7,000 garment factories producing
for export. Therefore, current remediation efforts only address the
tip of the iceberg of Bangladesh’s ready-made garment (RMG)
industry and leave almost three million workers unprotected.
There
has been the absence of adequate financial resources, either from
local factory owners in Bangladesh, their international buyers, or
other sources. In most cases, completion of the remediation process
hinges on costly structural repairs to factories. Many local owners
are unwilling to invest without guarantees of future orders.
The
question of “who pays?” needs to be addressed before improvements
can be made, or perhaps they never will. Many of the root causes of
unsafe factories are deeply embedded in the operating context in
Bangladesh. Some of these problems are tied to structural weaknesses
in makeshift factories and to the weakness of Bangladesh’s
electrical grid, which forces many factory owners to install heavy
generators in buildings never designed for them.
The
World Socialist Party (India): 257 Baghajatin ‘E’ Block
(East), Kolkata – 700086,
Tel:
2425-0208,
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