Farida did not know if her son was alive or dead. Tears streaming down her face, Farida showed person after person his photograph, but no one had any information. Doctors, firefighters, policemen—no one had any evidence that he made it out alive.
Her son, a garment worker in the now-famous Rana Plaza, could be one of the more than 600 people killed when the nine-story building collapsed, enveloping more than 3,000 people in concrete and steel. I met her amidst the search-and-rescue mission the day after the factory collapsed as part of a small assessment team with the humanitarian organization, Concern Worldwide.
The scene was sheer chaos.
More than one thousand rescue workers, from members of the armed forces and firefighters to everyday people, tirelessly tore through the building’s remains in search of survivors. Emergency medical clinics were overflowing with people in need of immediate care, while relatives of garment workers, like Farida, frantically searched for their loved ones, their fear growing palpably greater by the minute that they would not be among the lucky ones pulled from the rubble.
Tears streaming down her face, Farida showed person after person his photograph, but no one had any information.
More than a week has passed since Rana Plaza collapsed and with it, so has the hope that the remaining garment workers will be uncovered alive. The rescue mission still continues, and the injured need treatment. But that just scratches at the surface of what is needed for families—and Bangladesh as a country—to recover from this heart-wrenching tragedy.
For one, most of the workers who died or were injured were their families’ sole breadwinners. They will now have to figure out how to scrape by without those wages, and I firmly believe that it is the responsibility of the government, factory owners, and the owner of the building to ensure that the survivors and their families—most of whom are among the poorest in Bangladesh—are not driven deeper into poverty for a catastrophe that was not of their making.
The anguish of Rana Plaza began long before its walls buckled. Bangladesh’s garment-makers, most of whom are women, work around the clock just to earn $37 a month—the lowest wages paid by any garment-producing country in the world. Lowering costs inevitably leads to factories cutting corners of building regulations, and the health and safety issues of the workers. Workers are scolded or fired if they speak, and have no health care, sick leave, or benefits of any kind. They do not have the right to form a trade union.
The fact that two women gave birth in the rubble of Rana Plaza is a testament to the working conditions these women endure every day to make the clothes that are sold on department store racks a world away.
The anguish of Rana Plaza began long before its walls buckled.
Boycotting clothes made in Bangladesh is not the answer, but the end consumer needs to demand more from the stores they shop in. Clothing companies that rely on cheap labor to keep profit margins high also rely on the buyer to ignore the inhumane conditions their products are made in.
It’s time for that to stop.
While Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on 2nd May recognized that Bangladesh’s garment-making industry is wrought with problems and said her government was moving quickly to fix them, international buyers are also partly responsible and need to demand greater transparency on how their clothes are made. To start, retailers should sign onto the Bangladesh Fire and Building Safety Agreement, a plan that requires independent structural inspections of factories, the findings of which are made public. PVH, the parent company of Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein, have embraced the agreement, but it will take more retailers to follow suit to change an industry that employs more than four million people and generates more than $19 billion for the country each year.
As a humanitarian organization working for more than 40 years in Bangladesh, Concern will work with our partners on initiatives to ensure that factories comply with the safety and security laws that are so often ignored—and as Rana Plaza showed us all, at immense human cost.
Clothing companies that rely on cheap labor to keep profit margins high also rely on the buyer to ignore the inhumane conditions their products are made in.
