Survivors struggle a year after factory collapse

A year ago, Akhter Lucky, 25, was a Bangladeshi stay-at-home mother while her husband, Ashraful Islam, 30, earned about $58 a month as a line manager in a garment factory. That ended on April 24, when Rana Plaza -- the multi-storey building housing Islam's factory -- collapsed, with about 3,600 garment workers making clothes for western brands inside.
Today, Lucky herself goes out to work, earning $77 a month making clothes for brands like Gap, Zara and Tommy Hilfiger, while neighbours care for her four-year-old son. Islam -- who was dragged from the Rana Plaza wreckage, but has no memory of the disaster or days that followed -- stays at home, wrestling with migraines and nausea.
“It's difficult to support us all as I also have to cook and look after my son,” Lucky says. Conditions at her new workplace owned by the Standard Group, one of Bangladesh's largest manufacturers -- whose buyers support new western initiatives to improve factory safety, are better than at Rana Plaza, but, she says: “I am constantly afraid.”
More than 1,100 people, many their families' sole breadwinners, were killed at Rana Plaza, one of the most lethal industrial accidents in history. But most of the 2,400 survivors -- many of whom were trapped in wreckage, surrounded by corpses before they were rescued – also suffered crippling physical injuries and emotional trauma, impairing their ability to work.
A year later, most families of the dead and injured remain under severe financial strain, with just a fraction of the surviving workers back in paid employment.
“They are having so much difficulty buying food, paying rent, paying debt, or even going back to doctors,” said Farah Kabir, Bangladesh country director of the charity ActionAid, which is monitoring survivors. “A lot of them are still traumatised. Unless you were there on that day, you can't understand what a nightmare it was.”
In the aftermath of the catastrophe, some western brands -- under fire for using Bangladeshi companies that ordered workers back into a doomed building even after large cracks appeared -- publicly promised to help the victims.
Today, however, the Rana Plaza Arrangement -- a groundbreaking multi-donor trust fund set up with International Labour Organisation participation -- has just a fraction of an estimated $40m required to compensate victims for medical expenses and lost wages, in line with international standards.
Just half of the western companies that patronised factories in Rana Plaza – including Walmart, Inditex, Kik, Loblaw and Mango – have donated, and critics argue their contributions, mostly ranging from $500,000 to $1m per company, are too small.

“Given the level of their profits and the scale of what happened, it is not really acceptable,” said Emma Harbour, an activist with the Clean Clothes Campaign, which pushes for garment workers' rights.
There are exceptions. Primark, the British discount retailer, has contributed $1m to the fund and is giving $7m directly to workers of New Wave Bottoms, their supplier. Loblaw, the Canadian supermarket chain, has also contributed $3.3m. Retailers such as Gap and VF Corporation have donated, despite no links to Rana Plaza factories.
The fund, which is making an initial $644 payout to all eligible workers or families, now has just $7m in its coffers, and another $1.3m in pledges; the Primark funds bring the total to just over $15m.
However, half the western companies that used, or had recently used, Rana Plaza factories have not contributed. Some, like Benetton or Matalan, have donated to Brac, a nongovernmental development organisation, for programmes to help victims, or families that lost their main breadwinner.
But the ILO and labour activists say charitable services for victims cannot replace a transparent and equitable process of providing cash compensation to all.
 “Compensation is an entitlement,” says Gilbert Houngbo, ILO deputy director-general. “Charity has a key role to play supporting rehabilitation and other services but it is voluntary by nature and not a substitute for entitlement.”
Harbour, the activist, says: “If brands want to support Brac that's fantastic, but it doesn't excuse them from taking responsibility of the impact of their sourcing practices that led to more than 1,000 people dying.”
For Mosammat Afroza Begum, a 27-year-old mother of three, help can't come fast enough. The sole supporter of her children, Afroza suffered spinal injuries and cannot sit or stand for long periods. She depends on painkillers and sleeping pills to get through each day.
She is now begging for help from friends and neighbours and borrowing money to feed her children. Her debts have mounted to $390; she does not know how she will ever repay them.
“If I go to ask anyone for help, they say go back to work and earn money,” she says. “But I'm not healthy enough. If I look at the roof or get on any stairs, I start to feel like I'm falling down. I'm so dependent on medication; as soon as I stop taking it, I start to feel terrible. I'm very scared about the future.

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