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Garment workers protest after Bangladeshi fire
Wednesday 28 November 2012, by
Garment workers protest after Bangladeshi fire
By Peter Symonds
Thousands of Bangladeshi garment workers from the Ashulia industrial zone north of Dhaka took part in angry protests yesterday over the Tazreen Fashions factory fire that claimed at least 112 lives on Saturday night.
The protesters demanded justice for the victims, the punishment of the factory’s owners and improved safety conditions. Police set up a roadblock on the main Dhaka-Tangail highway to prevent the workers from marching towards the city. Clashes broke out, with protesters throwing stones at police and passing cars.
One worker, Shahida, told Reuters: “I haven’t been able to find my mother. I demand justice, I demand that the owner be arrested.” On Sunday, some 40 garment worker organisations held a rally in front of the Jatiya Press Club in Dhaka.
Clearly aware of the widespread anger over the fire, managers closed many of the hundreds of garment factories in the Ashulia zone yesterday. Police sources told the Daily Star that the closures were “to avoid any untoward incident”.
Fearful of wider unrest, the government declared that all garment factories would be closed today in a national day of mourning. The expressions of concern by government and opposition parties in parliament yesterday were completely cynical. Successive governments have taken no action over the appalling safety standards in the lucrative garment industry, which accounts for 80 percent of the country’s exports, generating earnings of $US19 billion.
Desperate to deflect attention from the government and employers, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed, without a shred of evidence, yesterday claimed that the fire was an act of sabotage. Pointing to the arrest of two people who allegedly set fire to a different factory on Sunday, Hasina declared that the Tazreen Garment fire was undoubtedly “pre-planned” and accused “a vested quarter” of committing “acts of sabotage to destabilise the country”.
Dhaka police superintendent Habibur Rahman Khan also claimed Saturday’s fire was “likely to be an act of sabotage”. He announced that law enforcement agencies had beefed up their presence at garment factories “to look after their security”. This police build-up is clearly aimed at suppressing protests by garment workers who have previously participated in large-scale strikes and demonstrations over pay and conditions.
Senior fire fighters have already indicated that the likely cause of the Tazreen Garment blaze was an electrical fault. Regardless of how the fire started, the reasons for the high death toll lie in the lack of basic safety standards in the eight-storey building. Workers had no means of escaping, as doors were either locked or led to the ground floor, where the fire started.
One survivor, Mohammed Ripu, told Associated Press that he had been stopped from leaving the building after the fire alarm went off: “Managers told us, ‘nothing happened.’ The fire alarm had just gone out of order. Go back to work. But we quickly understood that there was a fire. As we again ran for the exit point, we found it locked from outside, and it was too late.”
Many of the injuries and some of the deaths occurred when workers jumped to escape the fire. Bangladesh’s chief factory inspector Habibul Islam said that the factory, which was built in 2009, had only been given permission for three storeys. “They expanded the building without our approval,” he said.
The building lacked adequate fire fighting equipment. Another worker, Yeamin, told the Associated Press that the fire extinguishers in the factory didn’t work, and “were meant just to impress the buyers or authority.” TV footage showed investigators finding unused fire extinguishers inside the factory, the news agency reported.
Employers have paid limited compensation to the families of victims. The government has set up several inquiries. Labour Minister Rajiuddin Ahmed Raju yesterday declared that he would shut down garment factories that did not have at least two fire exits. Similar promises have been made previously, only to be broken.
Amirul Haque Amin, president of the Bangladesh’s National Garment Workers Federation, told Reuters: “This disastrous fire incident was a result of continued neglect of workers’ safety and their welfare. When a fire or accident occurs, the government sets up an investigation and the authorities, including factory owners, pay out some money and hold out assurances to improve safety standards and working conditions. But they never do it.”
The trade unions, however, have colluded with successive governments in maintaining low pay and poor conditions, in the name of keeping the country’s garment industry “internationally competitive”. Labour costs in Bangladesh are lower than in rivals such as China, Sri Lanka and Vietnam.
Global corporations that source their garments in Bangladesh have been quick to try to distance themselves from the fire. PVH, Nike, Gap, American Eagle Outfitters and the French company Carrefour have all released statements declaring that their products were not made at the Tazreen Garment factory.
Walmart issued a statement declaring that it was “trying to determine if the factory has a current relationship with Walmart or one of our suppliers.” However, Kalpona Akter from the Bangladesh Centre for Worker Solidarity, found labels at the site for Walmart’s Faded Glory brand, as well as for leading European retailers.
Associated Press has reported that inspections of the factory conducted for Walmart had given it a “high risk” rating in May 2011 and a “medium risk” rating in August 2011.
Anxious to protect their brand names and profits, and avoid any legal liability, international corporations have established various supposedly independent factory audits for safety and working conditions. But such inquiries are often perfunctory.
A spokesman for the European retailer C&A said that Tazreen Fashions had been due to deliver 220,000 sweatshirts over the coming three months. He explained that the company normally conducted an audit for standards and working conditions before entering a business relationship, but acknowledged it had not been carried out in this case.
The global corporations are well aware of the atrocious pay, conditions and safety standards throughout much of Bangladesh’s garment industry. While buyers insist on the most exacting standards when it comes to price, manufacture, quality and deadlines for their products, similar conditions do not apply when it comes to the wellbeing of the workforce.
The result has been one tragedy after another, with at least 500 deaths from garment factory fires in Bangladesh since 2006. Yesterday another fire broke out in the first floor of a 12-storey building that houses three separate garment factories in the Uttara area of Dhaka. No casualties have been reported, in large part due to the efforts of construction workers in a neighbouring building, who quickly made a bamboo ladder to allow trapped garment workers to escape.
Forum posts
1. Garment workers protest after Bangladeshi fire, 2 December 2012, 06:54
Thousands of Bangladesh garment workers demonstrated this week over the deaths of at least 112 workers in the country’s worst factory fire at Tazreen Fashions in the Ashulia industrial zone north of Dhaka. At least another 150 were injured, either by the fire or after jumping out of factory windows to escape the blaze.
After protests on Monday and Tuesday, workers at the Ma-Meen group walked out on Wednesday morning, following an electrical short circuit in one of the group’s units, which raised fears of another factory fire. They were joined by thousands of other workers, with the number reportedly swelling to more than 20,000.
Protesters blocked the Dhaka-Tangail highway for six hours and clashed with police. About 50 workers were injured when the police charged with truncheons, and fired teargas shells and rubber bullets. Authorities shut most of the 300 garment factories in the area.
Protesting workers were demanding justice for the dead and injured, including the arrest of the factory owner. They also called for proper compensation for their families and improved safety standards in the country’s thousands of garment factories. Hundreds of workers were in the eight-storey factory last Saturday when the fire broke out on the ground floor, trapping those above.
Bangladesh’s New Age newspaper reported: “[M]ost survivors who became injured in the fire were struggling to pay for their treatment as neither the government, nor the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporter’s Association (BGMEA), nor factory owners had come forward to help them.”
Seeking to contain mounting public anger over the fire, police arrested three factory staff—administrative officer Dulala Uddin, store supervisor Hamidul Islam Lavlu and security supervisor Al Amin—on Tuesday night, after reports that they had locked the factory gate when the fire started.
The three men were paraded in front of the media and remanded in custody for interrogation by the High Court. Dhaka District Police Chief Habibur Rahman told Reuters they were being investigated for suspected negligence. The factory owner has not been arrested or charged. Nor has any government official. Instead, three low-level supervisors are being lined up as scapegoats.
2. Garment workers protest after Bangladeshi fire, 6 December 2012, 18:40
At least 50 guards and workers of an export-oriented leather factory were injured when several hundred garment workers attacked the company’s premises and vandalised six of its vehicles in Ashulia yesterday.
Located at Pukurpar in Zirabo of Ashulia, Picard Bangladesh Ltd, a Bangladesh-German joint venture, came under attack from the workers at around 3:00pm as its owners, like many readymade garment factories in the area, did not give in to their sudden call for production suspension.
"At least 50 of our staffers, most of them female, became victims of the attack. Over 25 of them were hospitalised with severe injuries," Musleh Uddin Ahmed, a deputy manager (store) of the factory, told The Daily Star.
Picard Bangladesh, which employs 1,200 people, manufactures leather hand bags, briefcases and small leather goods for exports. Apart from manufacturing its own brands, it produces products for customers based in Australia, Europe, Canada, Japan and Singapore, according to the company’s website.
Witnesses and officials said the trouble started with a fire panic at a the factory of Mascot Group in the area, which left 50 of its workers wounded and prompted its owners into declaring the remaining day off for workers at its three factories.
When its workers came out of the factory, those in other factories in the area followed suit fearing attacks.
Garment workers gathered on the road in front of Picard Bangladesh and started agitating, demanding production suspension at the factory at around 2:45pm, witnesses said.
Several hundred workers broke open the main gate and attacked all the units housed in three separate buildings of the factory in around an hour of the rampage, the witnesses said.
They also damaged six vehicles of the factory, which were parked on the factory premises.
A visit to the factory after the vandalism revealed that all glass, windowpanes and furniture of the building had been damaged, vehicles smashed and flower tubs in the garden broken. Ashes caused by fire were seen at the main entrance of the factory.
During the attacks, around 15 policemen were seen hiding for safety inside a building in front of the leather factory when the attackers looted valuables and vandalised the factories, creating a panicky situation among the workers, security guards and officials of the factory.
"The unruly workers first started damaging the window panes of the factory by pelting brick chips. At one stage, they stormed it by breaking its main gate made of heavy steel," said Mohammad Shahjahan, a security guard of the leather factory, who suffered severe injuries when he fell under the broken gate.
Shahjahan said, "Soon after the attackers stormed into the premises, they went violent. Many of them resorted to vandalism from outside the buildings, equipped with various sticks and brick chips while many others ran into all the buildings for looting."
Saiful Islam, managing director of Picard Bangladesh, said, "At one point of the violent attack, I along with my daughter [Amrita Markin Islam, who is also the head of business of the factory], had to hide in the strong room to save our lives."
He said the attackers either might have been the workers of various RMG factories or criminals.
One of the leading entrepreneurs of the country, Saiful vented his anger over the reluctance of the police to respond.
"We begged for the security of our lives from the police by phone. You (police) please come. But the police did not come on time," said a frustrated Saiful, standing at the factory premises, which were littered mostly with broken glass and brickbats.
"Today, we were really afraid for our lives. There is no security of our lives, our factories," he said.’
His daughter Amrita Makin Islam, who is head of operations and business development, was present at the time of the attacks.
"What is my fault? Have I committed any mistake by setting up industries in the country and exporting from this country?" Saiful asked.
He told Industrial Police director Golam Rouf: "If you (police) had reached on time, such severe damage might not have been caused to the property."
"You know, it is a Bangladesh-German join venture. Now what shall I tell them about it?" he asked.
Industrial police, however, said they had tried their best.
Golam Rouf said, "We have done our best. We dispersed the attackers and saved the factory from their bid to burn it down."
He, however, acknowledged the limitations of the police and said they had to make their way to the factory through several agitations and clashes by the workers of many other factories in the area.