‘No Bangladesh garment firm totally safe’

Agence France Presse

DHAKA: Safety overhauls of Bangladesh’s garment factories were running behind schedule and none were considered totally safe two years after the Rana Plaza disaster, a global labor group said Thursday.
IndustriALL said thousands of factories were found to have some structural flaws following inspections carried out in the wake of the tragedy that killed more than 1,100 people.
The Swiss-based group said efforts to upgrade the factories were lagging despite some 200 mostly European retailers
“Important progress has been made, but the fact that all remediation is currently behind schedule, some over six months behind, is a serious problem,” IndustriALL said in a statement on the eve of Friday’s anniversary of the disaster.
“It is an unacceptable reality that not a single factory can yet be called 100 percent safe,” the group, which played a key role in sealing the agreement, said.
The nine-story Rana Plaza factory complex imploded on April 24, 2013 in one of the world’s worst industrial disasters.

The collapse triggered international outrage and put pressure on European and US brands who had placed orders to improve the woeful pay and conditions at Bangladesh’s 4,500 garment factories.
Two years on, nearly $25 million in compensation has been paid out to survivors and relatives of the dead.
More than 2,500 garment factories have been inspected for structural, fire and electrical safety since the disaster, the ILO said in a statement on Thursday.
Despite IndustriALL’s statement, Bangladesh Junior Labor Minister Mujibul Haque hailed progress made so far in improving the safety of Bangladesh’s $25 billion garment industry.
“Almost three quarters of garment factories have now been assessed for structural and fire safety with only a very small number being deemed too unsafe to operate,” he said at an event to mark the disaster.
The Bangladesh Garments Manufacturers and Exporters Association also said Thursday that major improvements had been made to factories, with only around one percent deemed too unsafe to repair and forced to shut down.