Another fire in a Bangladeshi garment factory, over 120 lives lost
and more than a hundred injured - the only difference this time from the
many other factory fires in the past 30 years is the scale of the
deaths and human suffering. It is this that makes it 'worthy' of
comment, for a brief moment, in the international media. But fire is an
occupational hazard for both bosses and workers in this industry(1). For
employers - and their foreign buyers whose brand names are on the
labels - it is merely part of a cost and profitability equation and an
element of Corporate Image management. This particular death-trap
factory was operated by Tazreen Fashion Ltd in the Dhaka industrial
suburb of Ashulia and supplied, among other major brands, C & A in
Europe and Walmart in the US.
That factory fires have for decades been such a common occurrence in
the ready made garment (RMG) industry means that fire risk is, in
effect, factored in as an influence on decisions on how production is
organised. With fast turnaround times demanded by buyers for foreign
orders in the highly competitive global fashion retail markets, time is
always tight and any production stoppages edge businesses ever-closer to
invoking contractual financial penalty clauses for late delivery.
Inevitably, corners are cut and workers' health & safety is a low
priority(2). (Employers claim that fires have been reduced in recent
years. But it may only be that - as production models develop and their
scale increases - that though there may be less fires, bigger factories
will mean their death count becomes larger when fires do occur.)
In this case the fire began at around 6.45 on Saturday evening, for
reasons that remain so far uncertain, on the ground floor and quickly
swept upward through the nine storey block. Survivors report hearing a
fire alarm and beginning trying to leave the building; but workers claim
that management told them to return to work, saying there was no fire
and that the alarm was simply malfunctioning.
This lie was shortly revealed; as fire began sweeping up the
stairwells of the building it ignited piles of fabric and yarn stored in
corridors. Over a thousand workers were trapped in the building; trying
to escape, with only three staircases and no safety exits, many found
themselves trapped by locked grills separating the floors.
Workers were forced to leap from windows in trying to escape the heat,
smoke and flames, many jumping to their deaths trying to reach roofs of
surrounding buildings. Some managed to find their way to upper floors
from where they were rescued by firefighters. Others created improvised
bridges to nearby buildings or rope ladders from rolls of fabric. The
rest were trapped by locked exits and the advancing fire... Dozens of
bodies were recovered from various upper floors, many so charred as to
remain unidentifiable.
Locked gates are another common danger workers repeatedly complain of in
relation to factory fires. For security reasons - to guard against
theft of fabric stock and to control movement of workers - exits are
often kept locked. That this has repeatedly been noted for decades as a
major contributing factor in fire deaths has made little difference to
factory bosses; it remains a cost-effective measure and that's what
counts. For the Tuba Group (a major garment exporter of which this
factory was a subsidiary) this is probably a relatively minor set-back
and temporary embarrassment. Basic factory start-up costs are low and,
in one of the world's poorest countries, labour power is easily
replaceable. Lost productive capacity will soon be re-established. A few
cosmetic crocodile tears will be shed by employers;
This is business as usual for the garment industry; compensation at
the rate of $1200 a life will be paid out by the garment bosses and
production is likely to carry on much as before.
The country is a major clothing exporter, second only to China. There
are around 4 million workers in 4,000 Bangladeshi RMG factories earning
the bosses up to $20 billion a year and these profits are built on
these conditions. RMG workers earn some of the lowest industrial wages
in the world. Exporting cheap clothing to the West has its price, cheap
or dear depending on your viewpoint and material interests.
As part of maintaining the Global Brand Image, corporations employ
compliance officers to check the working conditions of their factory
suppliers. All sides know how this game is played; a minority of
workplaces largely comply with minimum standards while the rest make
some show of doing so, knowing that an attractive sale price trumps all
other issues and that international brands will not let the necessary
image of compliance inspection to interfere too much with the
reality
of a regular supply chain. Model compliant factory areas may be
maintained as showpieces for compliance officer visits - while actual
daily factory conditions bear no resemblance to this. A separate set of
compliant books, showing fictitious higher rates of pay and safety
expenditure may be kept. Compliance visits can be simple audits of
paperwork rather than effective inspection. Equally, government-employed
safety inspectors - who are paid lower wages on the tacit understanding
that income can be 'topped up' - are easily bribed to turn a blind eye.
This shows how easy it is for RMG suppliers to appear to comply with
the minimum asked of them by foreign buyers - even when concerns have
been flagged up. This was not some back street hole-in-the-wall
fly-by-night marginal operation. It was a major exporter's large factory
supplying leading international brands; making clear how prevalent
these deadly conditions are, forming the basis of the $450 billion
global clothing industry. It also shows, once again, that these fires
are known by workers, bosses and foreign buyers to be both entirely
predictable and, if desired, largely preventable.
One might assume that such horrific scenes could become a tipping
point where the demands for significant lasting safety improvements in
the industry becomes irresistible; but there have been many other
horrific scenes, other "worst ever fires" before this one. Meanwhile the
profits keep growing.
Today, Monday 26th, there was another factory fire in Ashulia, this
time with no reported injuries. 200 factories in Ashulia are closed and
roads have been blockaded as thousands of workers have walked out to
march to the factory ruins to protest the deaths and demand improvements
in conditions.
Initial assessments by local police and fire services have stated
there is no evidence for deliberate arson, suggesting that an electrical
fault in the basement is a likely cause. Firefighters have also noted
the absence of safety exits and that they had to cut through locked
gates, verifying workers' claims.
But Bangladeshi politicians on all sides have never been slow to
shamelessly mobilise the dead in the service of propaganda gains. (This
is rooted in the conflicting loyalties of the nation's War of
Independence that have continued to divide the society ever since(3).)
The latest reports are that the government is claiming the fire as an
act of sabotage by political opponents - yet with no evidence so far
produced to support such a claim. Two garment workers who were arrested
on Sunday at nearby Debonair factory in Ashulia have confessed to an act
of attempted arson. Released factory CCTV footage shows a woman, Sumi
Begum, setting fire to clothing at Debonair - which was quickly spotted
and dowsed by other workers; she is reported to have later confessed
that a fellow worker, Zakir Hossain, paid her TK20,000 [$246] to set
the fire. But, though Prime Minister Hasina is linking the arrests with
the deadly Tazreen Fashion fire, those arrested have not confessed to
any involvement in it and no evidence has so far linked them.
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