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Bangladesh Rana Plaza factory collapse victims still awaiting compensation: Survey
ABC Radio Australia - October 25, 2013
A total of 1,129 people died when the Rana Plaza Complex in Dhaka collapsed six months ago. The factory complex produced clothes for a range of Western companies, most of which pledged to compensate the victims and their families.
Two charities, Action Aid and War on Want, surveyed 2,297 people, which is almost two-thirds of the survivors and families of those who died when the factory collapsed in April. Their report found that 93 per cent the victims are still suffering from injuries that are preventing them from returning to work.
The report also said 94 per cent had not received any legal benefits from their employer, while 92 per cent reported being deeply traumatised, with over half experiencing insomnia and trembling from loud sounds.
"The vast majority of people, if not nearly all, have received very little if anything in terms of compensation for the worst industrial disaster in the garment industry in recent years and we think that's completely unacceptable," War on Want's Murray Worthy said.
"The companies that sourced from that factory have a responsibility to make sure that those factories are safe. They failed to do so and they now need to make sure that the people who are affected are fully compensation."
Survivors call for compensation
Hundreds of victims and their families on Thursday held a rally at the site of the world's deadliest industrial accident since the 1984 Bhopal disaster in India. Children carried placards reading: "Please come forward, our parents were killed while working for you. Compensate us."
Reshma Begum survived being buried under the rubble for two weeks before she was finally rescued. She says she still lives with the trauma of her ordeal.
"Sometimes even now in my sleep I have nightmares that I'm trapped in the rubble," she said.
She says she is angry that little has been done to improve the conditions that hundreds of thousands of people still face within the country's textiles industry.
"Their salaries should be increased. Whatever is needed to make their life safer must be done. They work very hard and suffer a lot," she said.
"These clothes are bought by foreign buyers. I would ask them to give the compensation they have promised." Naznin Akhter Nazma, 21, who was pregnant when she was pulled from the rubble, said she had not received any compensation.
Having also lost her husband during the plaza disaster, Ms Nazna is struggling to make ends meet and provide for the newborn child. She said her rent is five months overdue and that shopkeepers will soon stop giving her credit to purchase food.
"It's indefensible that for six months, multi-million dollar companies have left the victims to fend for themselves," Farah Kabir, Action Aid's country director in Bangladesh, said.
"While corporations sit on their hands, the victims of the Rana Plaza disaster are in urgent need of medical and psychological support, as well as the financial means to feed and care for their families."
'Companies avoiding their responsibility'
The disaster caused outrage in the West, with many questioning the ethics of multinational companies using unsafe factories to make their products. Murray Worthy says the controversy has led to improvements but that there is a long way to go.
"There was a huge outpouring of public anger after that that saw a million people around the world sign petitions calling on various companies to change, and since then a hundred companies have now signed up to a binding agreement to work to make factories safer so we have seen some improvements."
"But realistically we're still seeing a lot of the same kind of attitudes from companies that they think that they can avoid responsibility for these factories, that it's not really their duty to make sure the workers who make their clothes are safe.
"So I think there's still a huge way to go to change the culture in the industry to make sure these kind of things never happen again."
To date only one corporation, which sourced workers from the Rana Plaza factory to produce its clothes, has paid compensation to the victims.
Clothing chain Primark also laid out plans on Thursday for further compensation. The British-based company said it would initiate a third payout to 550 workers employed by its partner New Wave Bottoms at the factory. Each of the employees will receive a further three months' wages.
But with many workers earning little as $39 a month, anger continues over whether the victims, or family members of those who died, will ever be adequately compensated.
Walmart and Benetton are among the large companies that produced clothes in the complex.
The Bangladeshi government has cracked down on unsafe workplaces but deadly accidents still take place. Earlier this month at least 10 people died in a fire that engulfed a factory which produced clothes for Australian companies. (ABC/wires)
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