Dhaka: Six years after one of the world’s most devastating factory disasters led to international safety monitoring in Bangladesh, campaigners are warning of “grim consequences” if such oversight is abandoned.
The collapse of the nine-floor rabbit warren of textile factories at Rana Plaza in Dhaka on April 24, 2013 killed 1,138 workers and shone a spotlight on the poor safety standards in Bangladesh’s $31 billion garment industry.
Under intense pressure, top brands such as H&M, Inditex, Carrefour and Gap set up two watchdogs to look at more than 4,500 factories that make clothes for Western stores. One of the watchdogs, the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, has already wrapped up after reviewing nearly 1,000 factories that produced mostly for US brands.
The future of the larger monitor, “Accord on Fire and Building safety”, representing some 200 European labels such as H&M, Primark and Tesco, is to be decided by Bangladesh’s Supreme Court after a lower court ruled it should also wind up.
Laura Gutierrez of the US-based Worker Rights Consortium, a labour group, warned that ending the international oversight “will have grim consequences for workers and factory owners”.
It “will cause brands to see the country as a far riskier place to produce,” she added. Christie Miedema of the Clean Clothes Campaign added that progress of safety “will be lost — setting the country on a path back to the situation before the Rana Plaza collapse”. (AFP)
