Suvra Kanti Das

Under the rubble

 

The economy of Bangladesh is entirely depends on the Garments sector and the proportion is 80%. But the salary of a garments worker is less than $50 USD per month. Mainly garments workers are come from villages and lives in slums in different part of town. They earn very small amount of money as tk. 4000-5000 only. Within this small amount they have to manage their live hood including feeding his family members, giving house rent, transport cost, cost of clothes etc.

 Normally, in a factory or Garments has 8 working hours but in Bangladesh most of them have to work 10-12hours. A garments worker have to attend his factory within  8am so that they have to hire a room near the factory where four to five huddle in a room and spend life in sub human condition. In that situation they are using one common latrine and a kitchen. And the total cost of this sub human condition is Tk=2000-2500.They share this amount among themselves to minimize their expense for live hood. After laborious job they come into their roost, cook their food and have their dinner or lunch in unhygienic floor or bed and sleep where they take their food. They share the single bed or sleep on the floor. 

 

Most of the garment factories in our country lack the basic facilities where our garment worker works all day long to earn the major portion of foreign exchange. Moreover in most of the factory, there are lacks of proper ventilation, airless situation; grubby rooms are seemed often. If any worker feel sick or couldn’t come to office because some unavoidable reason then it will not conceded and deduct their salary as per hour basis. The main concentration of owners is only their profit and this attitude has gone to such an extent that they do not care about their lives. 

 

In the 24th April 2013, the 8th stored Rana Plaza collapsed at Shavar, Dhaka. The Rana Plaza that has four garments, a bank, and commercial shops including electronics, clothes, collapsed in the morning around 8.30 AM, hour after garment workers were forced to join work. The shops and the bank on the lower floors immediately closed after cracks were discovered in the building. Warnings to avoid using the building after cracks appeared the day before had been ignored.  The search for the dead ended on 13 May with the death toll of 1,133. Approximately 2,500 injured people were rescued from the building alive. Among of the dead bodies, it was impossible to identify 291 bodies. 300 people are still missing and approximate 45 people lost their hand or leg. Their hand or leg amputated inside the rubble by general rescue worker using butcher knives or hacksaws blade and without anesthesia to free the workers who were trapped under the rubble of Rana Plaza.

 

It is considered to be the deadliest garment-factory accident in history, as well as the deadliest accidental structural failure in modern human history.

 

The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association president confirmed that 3,122 workers were in the building at the time of the collapse but the actual number of people was much more than that.