Another Rana Plaza victim dies

Kajol

Each day after last year's Rana Plaza tragedy was nothing short of a battle for him.

Apart from going through an unbearable pain, he also saw his family starving for days.

Kohidur Islam Kajol could barely walk on his own as he had broken his right hip-joint after being smashed under the rubbles.

He had also suffered a severe injury to the back of his head and hand.

Even after that, the only bread-winner of his family of five had made desperate bids to return to work.

But the bed-ridden 47-year-old garment staff failed to do so as his physical ailment did not allow him.

For the treatment, the family even sold all their properties and spent Tk 95,000 which they had got from Primark, a foreign garment buyer, as compensation. 

 Saleha Begum, wife of Kajol, said the ill-fated man even had started to show physical improvement following the treatment.

But their happiness was not to last long.

After 18 months of struggle, Kajol breathed his last at National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD) in the capital yesterday. Doctors said he had suffered a cardiac arrest.

Tragedy indeed struck him when he was working as a supervisor at the finishing department in Ether Tex Ltd, a factory housed on the fifth floor of Rana Plaza, on the day the building came crushing down.

He got stuck under the rubbles after the nine-storey building near Savar Bus Stand caved in on April 24 last year.

Rescuers pulled him alive and rushed to nearby Enam Medical College Hospital the next day.

Since then, he was treated at several hospitals, said his family.

Saleha said it was depression and trauma of the tragedy not the physical pain that had engulfed his husband after that day.

“He was really depressed and was under tremendous mental pressure as he could not earn anything,” she said.

Saleha also vented her anger as she claimed to have got no financial assistance from the government or the BGMEA for the treatment.

“My husband could have been saved had he not been deprived of the proper treatment because of money,” she told The Daily Star.