Bangladesh's crisis-stricken garment industry suffered its second serious accident in a fortnight when eight people were killed in a fire at a factory in Dhaka that was producing clothes for western retailers, including Primark.
Among the dead were the factory's managing director and principal owner and a senior police officer. Police said the fire started on the ground floor of the Tung Hai Sweater factory in the Mirpur suburb of Dhaka at around midnight on Wednesday.
The incident follows the collapse of the Rana Plaza complex near Dhaka on 24 April. The death toll from that disaster rose to more than 950 yesterday. The illegally constructed, eight-storey building collapsed while thousands of people were working inside. An engineer had declared it unsafe a day before.
The news that the Tung Hai factory supplied western firms will again focus attention on their role in the booming garments industry in Bangladesh. A website for Tung Hai boasted of supplying retailers in Germany, Ireland, Spain, Canada and the UK with products including cardigans, jumpers and pyjamas.
The factory's manager, Jabedur Rahman, said the owner and the other victims – including a member of the youth wing of the ruling Awami League political party and bodyguards – were having a meeting on the ninth floor when the fire broke out. Workers had left after their shift finished at around 8pm.
"The owner and his friends were found on the stairs but pronounced dead after they were taken to hospital," said Rahman. "They may have died of smoke inhalation while trying to find their way down."
On Thursday The facade of the 11-storey Tung Hai building, which towers over the blue-collar neighbourhood of Mirpur, was blackened by smoke. Workers crowded around the entrance, kept at a distance by police officers.
Piles of yarn as well as finished garments lay strewn on the ground floor. Among them were items appearing to be for well-known western labels. These included Cedarwood State and Atmosphere, both owned by Primark.
The head of compliance at Primark's Dhaka office, Arafat Kabir, confirmed that Tung Hai was a long-term supplier. "This was an active factory," he said. "It wasn't a ramshackle building. It was structurally sound and had adequate firefighting equipment. We offer condolences to the families of the deceased." He said that Primark executives had done a series of compliance audits at the factory and the last audit had been around six months ago.
This week the Bangladesh government said it had closed 16 garment factories in Dhaka and two in the south-eastern port city of Chittagong for safety reasons after the collapse of Rana Plaza.
"These factories will only be allowed to reopen after they have made structural and safety improvements," a senior official of the labour ministry said. "Every factory in the country will be inspected as part of a government initiative to ensure safety."
There are concerns that corruption and political influence may allow owners to evade regulations.
Bangladesh is the second biggest garment maker in the world, with 4 million workers, mostly women, employed in the industry. Many of them face chronically unsafe working conditions – with blocked or non-existent fire exits and shaky foundations – and receive barely subsistence wages.
More than 700 workers have died in fires in garment factories since 2005, according to labour groups who complain that neither retailers nor factory owners give enough importance to safety.
Kalpona Akter, executive director of the Bangladesh Centre for Worker Solidarity, said western brands must do more to improve safety in Bangladesh. "Fires are happening in modern factories as well as old ones," she said. "We must build a culture of safety in Bangladesh and international retailers must be part of this."
Mannan Kochi, vice-president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, said the fire in Dhaka was another blow to the image of the country's garment industry.
"This is a terrible accident and the owner himself lost his life," he said. "This was a modern factory. We will co-operate fully with the government to make sure we get to the bottom of what happened."
At the Rana Plaza site, army bulldozers uncovered 100 bodies on Thursday. Families continued to crowd around the site, clutching photos of those still missing. Army officials co-ordinating the rescue said the decomposition of the bodies meant relatives would have to wait for DNA tests, which they said could take up to six months.
Roughly 2,500 people were rescued from the building, including many injured, but there is no official estimate of the numbers still missing.
The government has blamed the collapse on the owners and builders for using shoddy building materials, including substandard rods, bricks and cement, and not obtaining the necessary official clearances.
Primark and its Canadian counterpart Loblaw have announced they will compensate the victims of the disaster, the world's worst industrial accident since the Bhopal gas leak in India in 1984.
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