The poorly constructed nine-storied building also housed four garments factories in its upper floor with all its machineries, electricity generators etc. But someone, supposedly the market and garment factory owners, changed the decision overnight and opened the market and apparel factory next morning. Tragedy ensued.

The bigger issue, concerning the industry and safety here in Bangladesh, is complicated. There is the question of the capacity of the state to enforce industrial safety and building construction codes properly, particularly in the wake of multitude of industrial, commercial and residential buildings coming up every year. Long-nurtured corruption, nepotism and culture of law breaking in various ways to gain mean advantage are widespread in Bangladesh. One part of this culture is that those who politically serve the ruling party get the privilege for doing commercial or even criminal activities bypassing or manipulating laws, regulations and best practice codes. Therefore, as it turned out that the owner-cum-rule violator in this case is said to be a local ruling party leader — it came as no surprise. Such things aren’t peculiar to Bangladesh only; the phenomenon can be observed in many other developing countries in deviant forms. Like the rest, Bangladesh has her own intricacies in this.

Fire broke out in another garment factory near Ashulia about a year back that killed close to two hundred, mostly the workers. The emergency gate was locked and the key was with the safety in-charge who was absent. Another garment factory building crumpled few years back killing about another 80 poor garments worker. In these cases legal actions are taken in a lacklustre way if the accused has some connection with the ruling elite or the action loses its way in the maze of colossal and ineffectual legal system of Bangladesh. The police cannot act independently, impartially and objectively. Their ideal system of functioning has been distorted long back and there is no effort to reform it for the good. They are de-motivated, corrupt and every time looks up to their political masters for direction or misdirection. Power and pressure are at play almost everywhere. Therefore, there is hardly any deterrence step ever taken. Only media and the civil society have some leeway to shout for reform in various sectors; but their reach are limited and they themselves are fractured enough not to make a lasting impact.

The foreign buyers and their governments are important and potentially influential stakeholders for bringing about some positive change. There are already talks in the air that the big brand American and European buyers and their governments might impose restrictions on import of apparel from Bangladesh. Disney already announced their pulling out of the country. But anything like that would harm the poor workers most, many of whom would lose their jobs and also increase the sufferings of many more in the pipeline to join the sector workforce.

Instead, they may increase their own check and balance activities. There are two broad categories of factories in Bangladesh. One is compliance factories and the other being the non-compliance ones. The compliance ones are inspected for workplace safety, minimum wage etc by big buyers or third parties. The crucial are the non-compliance ones that are often subcontracted by the big compliance ones for cheaper production and for grabbing greater profits or to get more work orders. The buyers are happy too as they get readymade apparels at a cheaper rate, thus enhancing their potential for a bigger profit margin.

The non-compliance factories in turn reduce their cost of production by not maintaining proper compliance requirements, which entail more expenditure. Are the government and the foreign buyers ignorant of this fact and of the subcontract issue? It isn’t possible in this age. There is a sense of an unholy and implicit nexus between some foreign buyers, mostly western, and their associated compliance factories in Bangladesh in this respect. The government isn’t interested to dig in it much further, for they don’t want to handle any potential unemployment and also don’t wish to disappoint many of their party men or contributors involved in these businesses.

Where from the reform initiative comes then? Is reform possible at all? Yes, it is. The latest incident and the previous ones are already ringing alarm bells in the sensible quarter of the ruling class. More similar disasters may, politically, be unbearable for the government as public anger is growing and worker’s protests taking place in many areas. There are increasing pressure from the media and the civil society. That makes a condition for an essential bigger push for the reform. And that should preferably come from the big buyers and their governments; not as punitive action on Bangladesh, rather by sharing of compliance enforcement burden in closer coordination with government and the BGMEA (Bangladesh Garment Manufacturer’s and Exporter’s Association). There were calls for contribution from big western buyers to upgrade the compliance standard of non-compliance garments factory. Reply from the heavyweight like Wal-Mart was ‘it isn’t financially feasible’. If it isn’t possible for the importers to contribute or organise such a contribution for the sake of potential non-agreement or competition within themselves, then their government should intervene. Clothing has become too cheap these days as the western buyers play the open competition card ruthlessly among the competing factories of the developing countries. ‘Cheaper quotations’ have become almost the only factor to get work orders and survive. With strict inspection from the buyers for quality of fabric, stitching etc., the only choice left to minimise production cost is increasingly lesser expenditure on factory structure, working condition and workers’ wages. That’s precisely is the story of the genesis of these potentially lethal non-compliance factories, which are the root cause of all safety concern. The only option for some financial contribution from the richer western users of the product, who get them at exceptionally cheap price, for the safety of the poor workers of the developing, is a ‘garments worker’s safety tax’ collected from all importers through a rational formula which would potentially not harm the market and in turn the production and employment in the developing world. This money may be used to offer ‘work place safety,’ ‘compliance incentive’ to factory owners through strict inspection and vigilance.

This is an overpopulated country with garment manufacturing is a crowded vital sector. About 2.5 million workers, mostly women, are employed in the sector. It generates big employment opportunities, earns the biggest chunk of the very important foreign currency for Bangladesh and contributes massively to the impressive six per cent in average annual economic growth of nation, which is imperative to pull up a very large population from below the poverty line. It offers opportunities to women in this Muslim-majority nation, where lack of women empowerment in the lower strata of the society is a big socio-economic conundrum. The garments manufacturing sector must live and thrive if Bangladeshi economy is to live. At the same time there should be some minimum guarantee for the life and health of the poor who shed their sweat to dress the privileged of the richer world. (IPA Service)