Let there be a lesson from factory accidents

Stress should be laid on worker safety, measures taken to counter them

KARACHI: The Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh, housing four garment factories, collapsed in 2013. It killed 1,129 workers and became the world’s worst industrial disaster in recent times. In 2012, another 258 garment factory workers perished after a fire erupted at the Ali Enterprises in Baldia town, Karachi. The same year, another 112 workers in a Tazreen shirt factory died in Dhaka due to a similar incident.

The Rana Plaza collapsed due to the illegal addition of four stories on a commercial plaza not designed to hold such loads. The fate of the victims at both Ali Enterprises in Karachi and Tazreen shirt factory in Dhaka was sealed due to grilled windows and locked doors with no fire escapes or equipment.



Ali Enterprises was Pakistan’s worst industrial disaster. The human aspect of these disasters was unprecedented, even by South Asian scales, and can be described in heart-breaking details. This does bring to light workers’ safety concerns in both countries.

These accidents exposed the questionable business practices of large clothing brands that import $200 billion worth of cheap garments from lesser developed countries and retail them for $1 trillion in developed nations. This while pocketing a windfall of profits with little regard to the life-threatening work conditions in which poor workers are forced to work. This business model of exploiting wage differences between the rich and poorer countries with a criminal disregard for worker safety is euphemistically termed as globalisation.

Bangladesh remains the engine of big-brand profitability from where the brands sourced $24 billion of garments in 2013. With its perennial security situation, Pakistan, while being at par with Bangladesh in early 2000s, has seen its share remain stagnant at $3 billion since that time. In this model, an average worker walks away with $100 per month in wages. A Pakistani worker does marginally better at $125 per month. A total of 3.6 million workers in Bangladesh and 400,000 workers in Pakistan work for this industry.



These tragic accidents in this industry made both Pakistani and Bangladeshi governments look ugly. Whereas the former had failed either to update or enforce its antiquated Factories Act 1934, the Bangladeshi government too had failed to enforce its fairly modern (created 1996 and revised in 2006) regulations on building safety; towards which the Rana Plaza owner had acted with utter disdain. It emerged that he was the ruling party’s goon and hence, untouchable.

In Karachi, two years of inquiry and prosecution of factory owners under public glare has still not yielded a verdict. It is clear that for both countries, the state machinery remains incapable of ensuring that factories built are structurally safe. Their governments cannot ensure that workers are in a safe environment — where their lives are not taken away by fires, collapses and other avoidable accidents. Ironically, the garment factories are at least regularly inspected for worker safety under the pressure of foreign buyers. For most local industries, the work conditions remain reminiscent of 18th century sweat shops of Dickensian description.

In this bleak backdrop of state incapacity and dysfunction, the succor unexpectedly came from the rich countries — their consumer of clothing and their civic society. Both were outraged at the scale of the tragedy. Big brands were the villains and poor workers were the victims of their greed. The outrage had enough traction to destroy big-brand profitability. This immediately spurred the brands into damage-control mode.

Steps taken to counter

Bangladesh, at a much bigger size than Pakistan, remained at the centre of these corrective actions while the repercussions reached Pakistani factories too. Within months of the tragedy, these brands formed two organizations; The Accord and The Alliance. The former represented European, while the latter represented North American brands. More than 500 international clothing brands signed up. Their membership fee primarily provided the funds. Their objectives were to ensure that garment factories were structurally safe, workers were adequately protected against electrical and fire risks and had adequate training to save their lives during emergencies. But, most importantly, the workers could bypass owners and report safety violations directly. Something the unfortunate victims at Rana Plaza could not do. They had been threatened with layoffs when they refused to work in the building with cracks, a day before its collapse.



In a massive undertaking spanning over a year, almost all garment factories were inspected. The detailed results of these inspections were posted on public websites. Also listed are the corrective actions for each factory. Even trivia such as a broken ladder, or an exposed electrical cable, or a steam pipe without heat insulation along with pictures, found their way in exhaustive reports posted on public websites. Buildings of about a dozen factories were deemed too unsafe and were ordered to be demolished. While most factories quickly took corrective actions and most of the corrective actions seem to be closed now.

Improvements in worker safety were also confirmed by a director of two large garment manufacturing concerns in Bangladesh. His factories employ more than 14,000 workers with an annual sales turnover of more than $100 million.

“The Rana Plaza was a tragedy that shook up Bangladesh,” he said. “But it was a criminal act of an individual and was not representative of factories in Bangladesh in general. They are modern, safe and well-built. Most have been built less than a decade ago. The inspections could find only few older factories that needed to be demolished and the rest are all safety compliant now”.

Ali Shahid Khan, director of Ali Murtaza Associates (Pvt) Ltd which employs more than 6,000 garment workers said the fires at Ali Enterprises in Karachi and the Tazreen factory in Dhaka had a far deeper impact than the Rana Plaza tragedy. “We are facing extremely stringent fire and electrical safety compliance requirements from international brands,” said Khan. “To meet the new requirements, we have spent heavily to install a network of fire hydrants and hoses and smoke detectors.

This is in addition to the previously deployed portable fire extinguishers. By complying with the new requirements on fire safety, we have also become much better prepared to combat future fire incidents.”

Capitalism remains amoral but sage regulations and their enforcement by the state can force a change for the better.

THE WRITER IS AN ENTREPRENEUR WHO HAS WORKED IN BANGLADESH’S GARMENT SECTOR

Published in The Express Tribune, October 27^th, 2014.

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