Task now to have forward safety progresses
Bangladesh should continue steadily to have forward the improvement achieved in ensuring place of work safety following a two deadliest back-to-back professional incidents to prevent a recurrence and conserve the lives of personnel.
On this day accurately eight years back, 113 personnel were killed and 90 severely injured when a devastating fire broke out at an eight-storey construction housing garment factory at Ashulia, most 35 kilometres east of capital Dhaka.
Tazreen Fashions' owner, Delwar Hossain, had constructed the construction flouting rules.
International retailers and brands that used to source apparel items from the factories failed to notice not merely the violations but also subcontracting businesses being run by Hossain in the building.
Moreover, some government officials gave approval to the factory's construction sitting in the comfort and ease of their air-conditioned office buildings without making a good physical inspection of the site.
And each one of these happened due to profit-mongering, actions motivated by greed and laxity in duties by some people, including the factory owner, vendors and brands and government officials who allowed business in that non-compliant factory building for a long time.
The way the staff finished up losing their lives is truly appalling.
Some guards had placed numerous exits locked in an obvious attempt at preventing the theft of numerous goods by the workers, effectively trapping the victims about different floor surfaces of the setting up and robbing them of any prospect to escape the deadly smoke and flames.
The screaming employees kept running in one to end to some other to get as a long way away as possible from the fiery blaze. Some tried to break the walls but could not.
A good few who did manage to escape by jumping off a window suffered extreme injuries from the impact of the fall. The next day revealed a queue of charred bodies, hapless victims who was simply looking to get to the window.
Firefighters cannot reach the spot promptly as the roads resulting in the building were narrow. They confronted troubles in dousing the fire due to a scarcity of normal water and lack of water bodies nearby.
"I can hardly describe the sad incident of the Tazreen Fashions fire since it was so serious for all of us," said Nazma Akter, president of Sammilito Garment Sramik Federation, a program for workers' rights.
A lot of the survivors remain traumatised, unable to go back to a standard life. "Consequently, their rehabilitation is needed both psychologically and financially," she said.
"Most of the groups of the victims remain passing their times in dire straits because of monetaray hardship," Akter told The Daily Superstar over the phone while recounting the incident in the eve of its eighth anniversary.
"We possess learnt a lot of lessons in workplace safety at the price tag on various lives," she said.
"Workplace safe practices has progressed a whole lot in Bangladesh as a result of factory remediation with the recommendations of the Accord and the Alliance, but we must maintain this improvement so that zero such incident happens and statements more lives," Akter likewise said.
The Tazreen fire and the Rana Plaza establishing collapse shook up the country's garment industry and tarnished its image.
The buyers' European platform of Accord and UNITED STATES platform of Alliance, formed by nearly 250 retailers and makes like H&M, Walmart, JC Penney and Primark, inspected practically 3,000 garment supplying factories.
Together the systems recommended electrical, fire and structural remediation for factory buildings to strengthen workplace basic safety.
The neighborhood garment factories have previously implemented the advice spending a lot more than $3 billion.
The Bangladesh government has twice provided a written report on the progress in workplace safety to any office of the US Trade Representative for the reinstatement of the US Generalised System of Preferences.
The facility was withdrawn in June 2013 citing poor workplace safety and labour rights.
Both the Accord and the Alliance have already been dissolved transferring the duty of continuing safety improvement monitoring to a newly formed RMG Sustainability Council (RSC), a physique formed with the representation of the owners, International Labour Organisation, union leaders and the sellers and brands.
"We wish the RSC to uphold the inspection and monitoring of the security progresses just like the Accord," said Akter, urging for Hossain to end up being tried in order that others usually do not even consider flouting compliance rules later on.
"The workplace safety provides progressed a whole lot in Bangladesh following the Tazreen Manner fire and Rana Plaza setting up collapse," said Amirul Haque Amin, president of the National Garment Staff' Federation, another platform attempting to protect garment personnel' rights.
"We need to keep up with the improvement and our achievements," he said.
The RSC should be permitted to work neutrally and independently to ensure that the body can keep on the safety progresses in the workplaces, he said.
Delwar cannot be reached for responses despite repeated attempts above the phone.
