Boiler blast kills again!
Six boiler inspectors for 5,500 factories in the country! One would have thought that the Tamapaco Foils factory fire last September that killed some 41 workers (although authorities contend that the fire was the result of a gas fire leak and not a boiler explosion) would have woken up policymakers to the dangers posed by the literally zero monitoring over boilers in industries. We have been reporting on the issue extensively over the last few years and going by data published in this paper, there have been between five to nine boiler accidents per year since 2012, totalling some 33 incidents that have killed 41 and injured 237 others. And this is not counting the latest incident in Gazipur that killed 13 people last Tuesday or those who died in the Tampaco incident.
We were assured by the Office of the Chief Inspector of Boiler that a proposal had been sent last March to the ministry of industry to expedite recruitment of 100 inspectors. The ministry forwarded the proposal to the public administration ministry for recruitment of 71 inspectors which, for whatever reason, was not acted upon. We are informed that the proposal has been sent back to the Office of Boiler last week with queries and now that we have another 13 dead on our hands, perhaps a fresh proposal is going to be sent for more manpower. This back and forth movement of proposals is an insult to the memory of those who continue to die or suffer injury because the paperwork gets bumped from one desk to another between ministries.
The latest explosion in the garments factory may have carried a higher death toll but for the fact that it had just reopened after Eid festivities and not all sections were operational. Every factory needs a boiler to generate steam for sterilisation, drying, power generation, etc. and with the paltry number of inspectors we have, every date expired boiler or one that is run by untrained hands is an accident waiting to happen. Of the 5,500 boilers in operation, 3,000 are in the readymade garments (RMG) industry which brings forth the question of fire safety that is being overseen by Accord. We would like to ask whether the body is doing an exemplary job on boiler safety since it falls under the purview of fire safety. The question must be raised because Multifabs Ltd. is an Accord-covered factory and the chairman and managing director of the company has stated that he bought the boiler from Germany with a lifespan of 25 years and such equipment was certified by Accord.
"Will we ever see criminal proceedings against those who bear responsibility for not replacing faulty equipment or not hiring professionals to run critical machinery like boilers?
Getting back to the issue of safety inspections, for the existing inspectors to examine and certify each boiler as safe, each inspector (six in total) would have to inspect 917 boilers per annum. If we break that down, each inspector would have to inspect 2.51 boilers on a daily basis (if they carried out inspection 365 days a year) including weekends. This of course is humanly impossible, but we do not see any ruffled feathers from either the management of the company in question or the ministry, which makes us believe that human life is so cheap in Bangladesh that a few dead workers is considered nothing in the grander scheme of things.
The original proposal last September was to put in place the recruitment process for 350 inspectors, which as we see now, ultimately got slashed down to 71 and even that number never went anywhere because of the slow movement of paperwork between the various ministries. Given that thousands of factories never get to see an inspection at all in the lifetime of their boilers, there is little compunction for the management to check for safety. However, any incident involving a blast means a major setback in terms of reputation and the huge human misery they cause. Workers' safety cannot be put on the backburner because of the apathy of the government which translates into nonchalance of factory owners and management.
Since 2007, locally produced boilers have also entered production and service in the country. So, if there is hardly any yearly inspection, how are we to know that the boilers installed conform to safety standards to begin with? What about the issue of compensating those killed and injured in such industrial accidents? The DC of Gazipur has announced that Tk20,000 would be given to each family of the dead. So the going rate for every person killed due to negligence on the part of the management and lack of concern of authorities is Tk20,000? What about those injured? What is the value of their physical injury and emotional trauma?
What about criminal negligence? Will we ever see criminal proceedings against those who bear responsibility for not replacing faulty equipment or not hiring professionals to run critical machinery like boilers? We have been passing the buck on safety for years now and given our lack of compassion for the common working man, we wonder if the factory inspectors will be recruited before another boiler goes bang somewhere else in the country.
The writer is Assistant Editor, The Daily Star.