April 24, 2018
This morning, nearly 3,000 survivors and supporters — including nurses and doctors who treated victims — gathered at Rana Plaza to mark the anniversary and honor the injured and the dead. Under the blazing noontime sun, they formed human chains across the property, and marched with banners that read “Workers of the World Unite!”
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Locals were not surprised when Rana Plaza went down. The day before the accident, the wall on the third floor split open like a fault line; workers fled en masse into the street. An engineer called to inspect the damage recommended the building be immediately condemned. “The crack was so huge I could put my hand in it,” said Ms. Begum, the single mother, who was then a sewing machine operator for Ither Tex Ltd., the fifth-floor tenant. Managers heeded the engineer’s suggestion somewhat: they sent everyone home but ordered them to return in the morning. And they did, hesitantly. “I was scared,” Ms. Begum said. “I was really in a panic.” They came back, she said, because they feared if they didn’t, they would not be paid at the end of the month.
Improvements don’t mean sweatshops no longer exist in Bangladesh. This reporter visited one in Dhaka, three days before the Rana Plaza anniversary. Fire buckets were filled with trash, emergency water bins were cracked and half empty, no one wore safety masks, most workers — some in their early teens — were barefoot, wiring was exposed, bolts of fabric and scraps littered the floors, window panes were broken, and the lone stairwell out of the tenement-like building was obstructed by cartons of finished product destined for Russia. After more than 1,100 people were killed in the horrific building collapse, hundreds of factories in Bangladesh were shuttered. Five years later, the garment industry looks set to return to business as usual.
Corporations that sourced clothes to the Rana Plaza:
- Wal-Mart, USA
- Children’s Place, USA
- Dress Barn, USA
- Primark, Ireland
- Matalan, UK
- Bonmarche, UK
- Cato Fashions, USA
- Tex (Carrefour brand), France
- Benetton, Italy
- Mango, Spain
- Joe Fresh (clothing line at Loblaws), Canada
- Industrias Cristian Lay S. A., Spain
- Shine (Texman brand), Denmark
- Jack’s (Texman brand), Denmark
- M. Corona, Italy
- Yes Zee, Italy
- NKD, Germany