Justice still eludes Rana Plaza victims: CPD

The government should address five important issues urgently to bring justice to the victims of the Rana Plaza building collapse, an economist said yesterday.

The five issues are: punishment to the responsible persons for the collapse, re-employment of the victims, free treatment for them, compensation, and finding out the missing workers, said Debapriya Bhattacharya, distinguished fellow of the Centre for Policy Dialogue.

The legal aspect of the Rana Plaza collapse has remained unaddressed even after three years of the incident, Bhattacharya said while commenting on the findings of the CPD’s study on the industrial disaster.

Over the last three years, the CPD has been conducting studies on the event, which claimed 1,135 lives and injured more than 2,500.

“It is a matter of regret that justice was not delivered even three years after the incident,” he said at the dialogue -- Re-emerging from the Rana Plaza tragedy: an account on the third anniversary.

The CPD and the International Labour Organisation jointly organised the dialogue at the capital’s Brac Centre Inn.

Last year, the total number of missing workers stood at 122, but this number declined to 55 this year, meaning the administration could identify some of them and their next of kin should be handed out compensation.  “The miseries of the missing workers' families are double as they did not get the compensation yet,” Bhattacharya said.

The government should urgently find the newly-identified missing workers' families to pay them the compensation.

According to the findings of the study, the rate of re-employment of Rana Plaza survivors is still very low, at 21.4 percent, as many of them do not want to go back to the workplace either for their physical health-related problems or mental trauma.

About 48 percent of the survivors are not fully employed, said Khondaker Golam Moazzem, additional director of research for the CPD, while presenting the findings of the study.

Regarding the improvements in workplace safety in the garment sector, he said Rana Plaza's legacy has been gradually evolving from 'poor compliance' to 'efforts towards better compliance'.

Although Bangladesh's garment sector is slowly heading towards the direction of a decent working environment, the pace of the remediation works needs to speed up.

Development partners may consider financing the remediation-related works as the estimated cost for the factory repairs will be about $448 million, he added.

Srinivas Reddy, country director of the International Labour Organisation, said the immediate priority after the collapse was to undertake the structural, fire and electrical inspection of the factory buildings.

“The safety progress deserves appreciation,” he said, adding that a large number of factories that produce for local consumption have not been inspected yet.

“Each and every garment factory in Bangladesh should go for inspection and remediation. This is a major message for the country,” Reddy added.

Mikail Shipar, secretary to the ministry of labour and employment, said shared and rented buildings are major challenges in the factory remediation process.

The other major challenges are the lack of personnel with the technical know-how and financing for acceleration of the remediation works.

Establishing a harmonious relationship between the factory owners, workers and trade union leaders is also a major challenge in the sector, he added.

Marcia Bernicat, US ambassador to Bangladesh, said the remediation pace is still slow in the garment factories.

She said more trade and workers welfare associations are needed for a strong voice of the workers.

“I strongly protest that the garment industry in Bangladesh has been built on the back of cheap labour. They have been producing world-class garment items,” Bernicat added.

While protesting an allegation from a garment maker, Rob Wayss, executive director of Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, asked the garment factory owners to lodge complaints to the agency's office if there is any specific complaint of corruption by any of the engineers and officials of the Accord.

“Rana Plaza building collapse was a wake-up call for us,” said Faruque Hassan, vice-president of Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association.

Rehman Sobhan, chairman of the CPD, said garment factory owners need to give institutional recognition to workers as partners in the industry and not as casualised inputs that can be dispensed with as and when market shifts.

“They are the people who actually add value to the industry and are central to global competitiveness.”

Rehman said the global market dynamics, which demands that garment exporters should constantly strive to keep their costs down, has created the problem of Rana Plaza.

In fear of losing buyers, the exporters scrimped on building materials, paying wages to workers or putting arrangements in place for workers' safety, he added.

Arshad Jamal Dipu, a former director of BGMEA, said he believes those who are conducting factory inspections are also promoting their commercial purposes.

“It has to be addressed. Otherwise, the effectiveness of this corrective action will not be there. The quality of inspections has to be ensured,” he said, adding that the government should be the driving force in inspection.

Wayss of the Accord rejected the allegations of Arshad.

He said the Accord stood by the inspections done by Bangladeshi and international engineers during the initial inspection and by Bangladeshi engineers in the follow-up inspections.

He also said it is untrue that it has pushed garment factories to buy any specific service or product for remediation. “We have a list of the companies who are doing different types of work related to remediation. We state that we are not recommending and endorsing them. We have simply provided the information to the factory owners.”

He said the Accord coordinated extensively informally on a daily basis and formally on a monthly basis with the Alliance, another factory inspection agency.

Babul Akhter, secretary general of IndustriALL Bangladesh, the local chapter of the global union federation, said the injured should always receive medical treatment.

He also said Accord and Alliance should work in Bangladesh until all the factories are fully safe.

Babul and a number of other labour leaders said the money the families of the deceased and the injured had received so far from various sources cannot be termed compensation; they are grants.

Marcia said: “We also believe it is critically important for workers to have a strong and powerful voice, to be able to say 'we will not work in that building with a cracked wall' and be heard and respected.”

Johan Frisell, ambassador of Sweden, said there should be effective trade unions where employees and employers can engage in effective dialogues and settle disagreements.

Leoni Margaretha Cuelenaere, ambassador of the Netherlands, also spoke.