Rana Plaza: Are we sugarcoating murder?
It is difficult to decide whether the murder case filed against 41 people for the Rana Plaza disaster can be measured as progress or not.
The murder case was filed charging the owner of the doomed building, Sohel Rana, his parents, the owners of four factories, the mayor of Savar municipality Refayat Ullah, the ward councillor Mohammad Ali Khan, the former chief executive officer of Savar Municipality Uttam Kumar Roy, and other government employees including engineers, site inspectors and one urban planner. The highest penalty they are facing is execution.
To begin with, the case is still pending. The case was only accepted by the court last year – three years after the incident actually happened – following a big concerted effort by activists and lawyers. Why did it take so long? The Daily Star previously asked the lead investigating officer Bijoy Krishna Kar, who is the assistant superintendent of Criminal Investigation Department (CID). His answer was that the police needed to take the government's permission to charge civil servants - and the government sat on it for several months.
This shows that we have miles to go before we sleep.
At the same time, this is one of the very few times that a manslaughter case has actually been filed in relation to worker deaths.
Manslaughter. The form of remedy that recognises undue, unjust deaths for what they are. It is a recognition that paying off a negligible amount of money to the family of the deceased victims is not the acceptable way of dealing with most cases of worker deaths. It makes a statement that this isn't just about compensation – it's about criminal justice. A form of justice that is denied to the majority of the workers in the country.
The security guard of the Malibagh-Moghbazar flyover who died last month when a girder fell on him definitely is not getting that from what it seems.
Yet the circumstances of his death all point to gross negligence on part of the authorities. A 36-metre-long girder weighing about 70 tonnes was being lifted when it fell, burying Mohammad Swapan under it. The Daily Star published several reports time and again on how the flyover is being constructed without consistently cordoning off space underneath it. When journalists visited the spot just a couple of days after Swapan's death, they saw business as usual. Under such circumstances, where there is a clear lack of will in implementing safety measures -- in ensuring the coast is clear when lifting girders -- should Swapan's death be considered an accident, or is it manslaughter caused by negligence?
The authorities are denying all responsibility, passing Swapan's death off as a ‘mishap’. Sushanto Kumar Biswas, project director of Moghbazar-Malibagh Flyover, told The Daily Star on March 14, “An accident is an accident … what else can I say?”
Bangladesh Legal Aid Services Trust (BLAST) is in the process of pursuing a compensation amounting to Tk 1 lakh for Swapan.
“What can we do - the compensation amount sanctioned by the law is absolutely negligible,” says Mahbuba Akhter Jui, staff lawyer with the organisation who is filing the case.
Dr Sheikh Solaiman is an expert from University of Wollongong expert with a trail of publications in legal journals about possible remedies for worker deaths.
He was asked this question -- is the penalty afforded by the Bangladesh Labour Act 2006 of an equal magnitude to that of manslaughter?
“Certainly not,” he says, “Although a different view exists, there is little reason to dispute the proposition that higher punishment creates greater deterrence.”
He goes on to say, “The punishment prescribed under the labour law and penal law of Bangladesh is unlikely to create any effective deterrence. Moreover, Bangladesh does have a serious lack of enforcement, which is even more frustrating for the community and encouraging for potential offenders.”
The other thing that our laws do not specify is who to press charges against. The law for murder only provides a scope to indict people who knowingly created a dangerous situation that can potentially cause incidences of death.
But the chain of accountability often goes higher. For example, the Rana Plaza disaster was not just the site engineers' fault – what about the Bangladesh Garments Manufacturers and Exporters Association, who created an environment of unsafe working spaces in the first place? Or the factory auditors sent by brands whose products were being manufactured in Rana Plaza?
That's where Solaiman brings in a legal term called “duty of care”. The main premise of corporate negligent manslaughter is that the death happened as a result of someone failing to perform what Solaiman terms “duty of care”. To explain, it means that authorities hold the ultimate responsibility in making sure the death is not caused by an oversight.
When the “duty of care” of the authorities is not acknowledged, it is hard to establish that there has been negligent conduct, he says. This makes it hard to prove corporate negligent manslaughter.
An example might help explain.
A circular was sent out by Brigadier General Moin Uddin, the chairman of the Palli Bidyutayon Board on Febraury 6, 2013. It reads, “We have been noticing incidents of deaths and injuries as a result of linemen/working crew operating on electric lines without grounding and shutting them down according to work safety regulations. All casualties resulting from working on electric lines that have not been shut-down or grounded will be the responsibility of the lineman/work-crew himself.”
Essentially, PBB is saying that if the death was caused by a lack of precaution taken by the workers, then it is their responsibility.
What makes this problematic, however, is that surrounding this one circular is an abundance of documented complaints about abusive conditions – long work weeks with no days off and no overtime pay, low-grade hazardous equipment and inadequate workforce – all of which together makes the perfect setting for mistakes.
When exhausted, overworked workers die, is it their own responsibility, or that of the organisation? If it is the organisation's responsibility, should the victims (or their families) just receive compensation – or should it be considered corporate negligent manslaughter?
Without public acknowledgement of “duty of care,” fighting for the justice is a long, hard battle.
One example is the case of Tazreen garments fire, according to Solaiman.
A case of 'criminal negligence culpable homicide' had been filed against the owner of Tazreen garments factory and its managing director. But as Solaiman's 2014 article in the legal journal The Company Lawyer states, “At Tazreen, the MD did not do any positive act that could be directly attributed to the fire except for the establishment of warehouse in the ground floor, all his conduct was simply an omission or failure to act [...].” Current legal frameworks do not take failure to act into account, says the article.
“Based on the above discussion, it can be concluded that, unlike their position in common law, neither Tazreen as a company, nor its MD, is likely to be held liable for culpable homicide, let alone for murder under the general criminal law currently in place in Bangladesh,” adds Solaiman in his piece.
According to a statistic compiled by BLAST, at least 3,036 worker deaths were reported in the media between 2009 and 2013. While it may be such that the Rana Plaza disaster skewed that number, an estimation for an annual death rate can be gotten from their calculation of 2014 - between the months of January and October, 260 workers died due to accidents. The figures were calculated using media reports, and the media rarely covers cases of workplace injuries - meaning that the figures are deflated. When hundreds of lives are being lost each year, isn’t it about the stopped just being numbers.
Comments