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(Image: AM Ahad/AP)
A GOVERNMENT INVESTIGATION found that “extremely” poor quality construction materials and a series of violations caused the collapse of a garment factory building in Bangladesh that has been called the worst garment-industry disaster in history, the committee head said today.
Last month’s disaster killed more than 1,100 workers and highlighted the hazardous working conditions in Bangladesh’s $20 billion garment industry and the lack of safety for millions of workers who are paid as low as $38 a month.
“The owner used extremely poor quality iron rods and cement,” committee head Khandker Mainuddin Ahmed told The Associated Press a day after submitting the report to the government. “There were a series of irregularities.”
Not built for industrial use
The report found that building owner Sohel Rana had permission to build a six-story structure and added two floors illegally so he could rent them out to garment factories. Past statements from authorities said the owner had permission for a five-story structure and added three floors illegally.
The report also said the building was not built for industrial use and the weight of the heavy garment factory machinery and their vibrations contributed to the building collapse. Those factors had previously been cited.
The ground on which the building was built was not fit for a multi-story building, the report said.
“A portion of the building was constructed on land which had been a body of water before and was filled with rubbish,” Ahmed said.
(Ismail Ferdous/AP)
Life in jail
The committee recommended that Rana and the owners of the garment factories be sentenced to life in jail if they are found guilty of violating building codes.
Rana, three engineers and four factory owners have been arrested.
The building was shut down briefly after workers spotted cracks in its walls and pillars a day before the April 24 collapse. But the garment factory workers were called back to work, many of them forcefully.
More than 2,500 people were rescued shortly after the disaster. The committee urged the government to ensure that all those injured receive free medical treatment.
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More than 1,100 killed. Hard to comprehend…
All so that we can buy stupidly cheap clothes. What sort of world are we living in?
Cheap clothes didn’t cause this, greedy/corrupt business men did.
They could have built a proper building and still made cheap clothes. It’s the low wages that make the clothes cheap.
Cheap clothes obviously didn’t cause the building collapse. Graft, corruption, cutting corners, lack of building standards control etc etc were undoubtedly the root causes. Building collapse and almost-slave labour are two separate, but intrinsically linked, topics.
There will some who’ll say that’s western consumers off the hook, it was local officials, builders and materials that were responsible for this disaster. In reality it’s all part of the race to the bottom to try and get contracts from western clothing firms.
@Ballocks2dis. The greedy business men would have no outlet were it not for our insatiable appetite for cheap clothes!
That’s like blaming armed robbery on a banks insatiable desire to store large amounts of cash
No it’s not the trade is driven by western demand and the desire by retailers to sell clothing to us at particular price points and make their profit. Retailer squeezes supplier and supplier squeezes their workers and overheads.
Shoddy, shoody, shoddy. You could talk that wall down. Wonder will those responsible do serious jail time? They wouldn’t here IMHO
have your say