Compensate victims immediately: HRW
Human Rights Watch, a New York-based human rights advocacy organisation, yesterday urged global clothing brands tied to Tazreen Fashions including the American giants Wal-Mart, Sears and Disney to extend fair compensation to the victims immediately.
“These global brands should no longer dodge their duty to help these people,” Brad Adams, executive director of HRW's Asian division, said.
Only two of the 16 firms linked to the ill-fated factory are believed to have paid any meaningful amount of compensation to the victims.
Five companies -- Dickies, Sears, Disney and Wal-Mart of the US and Teddy Smith of France -- have paid nothing, claiming the factory was making or storing their products without their knowledge or authorisation.
The other companies have offered undisclosed charitable donations.
At least 112 workers died and over 1,200 were injured in the fire at the Tazreen Fashions factory on November 24, 2012 in Savar.
The managers had barred them from leaving through the stairs, saying it was a false alarm, the survivors said. The exits were also blocked with cartons as the factory was rushing to fill an order. Workers were badly injured as they jumped out of the upper floors of the burning factory.
Survivors of the fire are still suffering from their injuries and loss of income two years on, HRW said in a statement. The fire took place in the same industrial town where, five months later, the Rana Plaza building collapsed, killing more than 1,100 workers.
“The victims of Tazreen, like those of the Rana Plaza tragedy, need a huge amount of support. Many of the survivors might have escaped the flames but their lives are ruined,” Adams said.
Interviewees said they had received Tk 1 lakh ($1,267) in compensation from the government and the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, but they had spent most of the funds within the first year of the disaster on medical costs.
Companies have a responsibility “to prevent or mitigate adverse human rights impacts that are directly linked to their operations, products or services by their business relationships, even if they have not contributed to those impacts”, according to the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.
The UN guidelines also state that “where business enterprises identify that they have caused or contributed to adverse impacts, they should provide for or cooperate in their remediation through legitimate processes”.
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