7th anniversary of Rana Plaza tragedy

Do developing nations need more poor workers? The answer is no. Having poor workers in poor countries means it leads to more exploitation. Since the 1980s, the world has experienced a new paradigm shift in the world trade system based on the doctrines of globalisation and neoliberalism.The process of globalisation and neo-liberalisation was initially designed to accelerate the process of creating more jobs in developing countries in order to strike a balance between the developed and the developing world where reducing income inequality was the main agenda. In the end, it did not happen.

The developing world would certainly have been more fortunate to have seen more Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). Nevertheless, millions of workers have been employed in the informal sector, such as in Bangladesh's RMG, but have been seen them being severely exploited. The horrific collapse of a building in Bangladesh on April 24, 2013 made headlines around the world and brought the country back into the spotlight in the Western media. An eight-storey building in Savar, approximately 24 km outside Dhaka, took more than 1135 RMG workers' lives and another 3500 were maimed permanently.

The question was, who was to blame for this kind of unethical business?The national government or employer or global clothing brand who came to do business in Bangladesh for maximum profit and exploitation of workers? In the end, it is a vicious cycle that obstructs the industry to be well-regulated in the phase of globalisation andin a kleptocratic society.About six million rural women and men emigrated from the local villages working in the garment industry, which enabled Bangladesh to become the world's second-largest garment exporter. Due to a lack of workplace health and safety standards, these workers have regularly been subjected to human rights abuses and others have become wealthy in creating fashionable clothing by paying the world's poorest wages and offering no other basic benefit to their livelihood.
The politics - the business alliance has long been a subject of debate and discussion among the people of Bangladesh. The recent studies point out that there are many politicians in the clothing business of the two main political parties - the ruling Awami League(AL) and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) has always played a reprehensible role in labour management and RMG factory owners are in a better position than workers.

Regarding trade union activities, it is important to mention that the workers are deprived of the collective bargaining of the RMG factory despite the permission of the national labour law.Trade unions are politically active in supporting their own political parties. Yellow trade unionism destroys the prevailing trade unionism concept in Bangladesh as workers do not see any positive change through their performance.

The Rana Plaza tragedy was the result of a corrupt system that is basically rotten. The building was constructed without proper building codes and laws and without the use of adequate materials. Many say, it should have been observed from the outset by the concerned authorities of the Bangladesh government, whose dereliction is particularly to blame in this example.Unfortunately, any kind of permission for high-rise buildings can be obtained through bribery in Bangladesh, and the building can be built without collecting sustainable building materials.

The high-rise buildings do not have proper fire-exit doors and adequate fire blaze control system. Prior to Rana Plaza incident, multiple factories were burnt due to lack of proper fire control system in the factory such as Tazreen Fashions. In the recent past, the fire broke out at the FR Tower on the eighth floor of a 22-storey building in the commercial Banani area of the capital city of Dhaka at around 1 pm BST on 28 March 2019.The building fire killed 25 innocent people and injured 70 others. The brutal incident exposed the state's weak building regulatory system.

The administrative failure of the government to protect human rights and the lack of respect for the rights of workers have allowed incidents like Rana Plaza to continue. Beyond the notoriously low wages, unsafe working conditions and restrictions and repression of trade unions plague the industry.

In the last five years, the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety has greatly performed to improve the safety condition in Bangladesh's garment factories. After starting work in 2013, Accord engineers found that 97 per cent of the total of 1600 investigated factories has no proper fire exit or fire alarm system in place.Most importantly, 91 per cent lockable or collapsible gates has been removed along with 74 per cent of all identified safety defects have been corrected, while another 12 per cent is still pending towards further verification. Nevertheless, serious concerns remain, for example, in nearly seven thousand RMG factories across the country, not 1600 factory is a satisfactory number.Thus, there is still danger persists and Rana Plaza or Tazreen fashions can happen at any time anywhere in Bangladesh.

DIFE and RCC are currently facing substantial work pressure to inspect and rehabilitate the factories under their purview, and thousands of additional factories may soon be required to be inspected.Now the question is can DIFE really monitor RMG factories with its limited resources and low technical efficiency? In addition, they face the added challenge of adding transparency and enforcement of commitments under international agreements, which are the only real safeguards for true and lasting improvement.

As of today, RMG factories are being shut down due to COVID-19. Millions of workers are struggling to stay out of work. There is no social welfare system in the state so that millions of workers survive with hardships. Everyday thousands of workers demonstrate in front of the factory or on the streets to reopen the factory or pay their arrears.For the last 40 years, these workers have made a tremendous contribution to the national economy so that Bangladesh is in a stable position today. Not only that, RMG employers have also made countless profits from their efforts in this sector as most of the RMG employers are now occupying big political and government positions in the country. Global clothing brands have made billions of dollars out of the high exploitation of Bangladeshi workers.

Therefore, it is important for RMG employers, global clothing brands and the state government to adopt a potential recovery strategy so that millions of workers can be saved from starvation. Any previous order by global brands cancelling to a Bangladeshi RMG company due to the COVID 19 effect of their marketing would only be unethical. It is imperative that employers and global brands move forward with their ultimate helping hand with an appropriate strategy to save this industry from any adverse catastrophe.

I started with a sentence, whether or not developing countries need more poor workers, I said no. This is because workers should not be exploited, but rather educated and should be aware of their basic human rights, collective bargaining rights, ILO labour standards and national labour laws. If workers are aware of their basic rights, no one will easily exploit them.
Finally, on the seventh anniversary of the Rana Plaza incident, it is strongly suggested that the family of each slain RMG worker should be given maximum benefits and other permanently disabled workers with similar benefits. Remember, your country will prosper if the workers survive.

The author is an Australian academic