Bangladesh Consider Tank Promoting Industrial Safety

Two years after the Rana Plaza tragedy, Bangladesh’s Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) believes that all initiatives undertaken after the industrial disaster should soon meet the expected outcome.

The consequences and lessons emerging from the Rana Plaza collapse call for ways to catalyse this experience to create a safe working condition in the industrial sector, members at the fourth CPD meeting said.

The dialogue - “Rana Plaza Tragedy: Two Years After,” was organised by CPD as part of the Post-Rana Plaza Monitoring: A Civil Society Initiative.

Chairman of the dialogue, Dr Debapriya Bhattacharya stressed all unfulfilled measures including compensation, rehabilitation initiatives and long-term action plans for the affected workers must be brought to completion with adequate care and accountability.

He particularly mentioned that appropriate actions against those responsible for the tragedy did not take place and the rights to form trade unions and fair wages was not adequately addressed by the bodies concerned.

He added that factories that were being shut down for risky operations needed relocation and coordination among different government bodies and the measures taken by international development agencies must be ensured.

CPD additional research director Dr Khondaker Golam Moazzem, in his keynote presentation on “Moving Beyond the Shadow of the Rana Plaza Tragedy,” noted that around 1239 workers received training on small business and entrepreneurship development and have started their ventures with organisational assistance in the last two years.

However, some survivors revealed that the victims and their families were struggling in comparison to their condition prior to the collapse despite various initiatives. Many of the survivors complained that the compensation after the tragedy was mainly spent on medical care.