ON the second anniversary of the Rana Plaza tragedy yesterday the nation remembered the victims in various programs to mourn the death of over 1100 workers and show solidarity with others who lost their limbs and became disabled in the building collapse. The Rana Plaza disaster is now treated as the world’s biggest factory tragedy in our time and we must say that Bangladesh garment industry has shown the resilience to cope with the aftermath of the tragedy by quickly improving factory safety standards and restoring confidence of the international community to stay with us as a reliable place for outsourcing of apparel products. But we express our anguish at the same time on the fact that the government and the BGMEA, the apex body of the garment industry have so far failed to properly compensate the victims’ families and rehabilitate the disabled workers and those yet not having a replacement job. We share the pain and agonies of the families on this occasion who have lost their sons, daughters and other relatives in the disaster and also those languishing in pains of disabilities. Noticeably, the second anniversary yesterday showed the outburst of the victims’ families and labour organizations who made the complaints that the government and BGMEA are not properly handing out monetary compensation as per the compensation package that the International Labour Organization (ILO) has worked out and Bangladesh government has agreed to implement. At a huge rally at Savar, where the tragedy had taken place in the outskirt of the capital, labour leaders complaints that a big part of the compensation fund is lying idle and vested interest quarters are at work to deprive the victims. In our view this is a highly sensitive complaint and we can’t allow our hard working workforce to be deceived who lost lives or have become disabled to bring prosperity to the nation. Such attempt must be overcome. Specially, BGMEA’s contributions to the Trust Fund for workers compensation is not transparent while it has already reportedly realized benefits of over Tk 3,000 crore in cash incentives and tax relief from the government as part of its help to the industry to help the workers. Their contributions need to be carefully scrutinized. Contributions of major brands and retailers’ to Tk 375 crore fund are falling short of their own pledge and we believe they would clear it soon. Meanwhile complaints about slow progress in criminal cases against persons responsible for Rana Plaza disaster must be overcome to put them on trial. We know that certain political quarters are at work to save Rana Plaza owner as he is a local ruling party men. Moreover, some agencies are equally reluctant to clear the name of some government officials for charge-sheet for their role in approving the faulty building plan. We demand that the rule of law must be allowed to function without intervention and the persons responsible for the death of so many innocent workers must face trial. Moreover, transparency must be restored to workers compensation to end all misgivings.
