47 killed in factory fire in Bangladesh

(November 2000)

(Article published on the ICFTU Website on 27/11/2000: http://www.icftu.org/displaydocument.asp?Index=991211938&Language=EN)

Yet more workers paid the price of employer negligence on Saturday November 25: 47 employees, including at least eight children, died in a fire at their textile factory. The doors were locked.

 47 workers died and hundreds of others were injured on Saturday in a fire that swept through the “Chowdhury Knitwear and Garments Ltd.” Factory in Shibpur, in the Narsingdi district (Bangladesh). Several of the injured are still hovering between life and death. The fire was started at about 7.00 pm by electrical wiring on the top floor of the factory where the clothing is ironed. Flames rapidly spread throughout the building, where 800 people were working overtime. As panic set in, they all surged towards the 4-storey building’s only staircase, but the doors were locked. “I was working on the second floor” says 22-year-old Aziza from her hospital bed. “When I heard the others shouting ‘fire’ I ran to the stairwell, but everyone was pushing each other, I tripped on the stairs and the people behind me just walked over me. I don’t remember anything after that. I woke up in hospital, with my right arm paralysed. The metal gates at the entrance of each floor of the factory are usually closed during working hours. On Saturday evening, only the second floor gate was open. The others were padlocked but the factory security guard couldn’t find the keys during the fire. We had to break the locks.” Aziza, like many other textile workers in Bangladesh, earns only 500 takas (US$ 9) a month, working from 8.00 am to 8.00 pm. Sometimes she has to work overtime until 10.00pm, such as on Saturday.

Of the 46 victims, four were burnt to death, others were electrocuted or asphyxiated by the smoke. Many were trodden on or crushed to death as the workers rushed towards the exit. The stairwell was so tightly packed that some workers tried to break the windows and throw themselves out to escape the flames. According to witnesses, some were impaled on the pointed tops of the iron railings surrounding the factory. Most of those who died were young women under 25 years old (85% of textile workers in Bangladesh are women), and at least eight were children. The list of victims posted at the entrance of a hospital close to the factory gives the names of five workers aged between 10 and 12 and three aged 14.

The “Chowdhury Knitwear and Garments Ltd” factory is in the BSCIC industrial zone, about one and a half hours drive from Dhaka, the capital. Saturday’s tragedy is by no means the first of its kind in Bangladesh, whose development is based largely on the textile sector where health and safety conditions are often appalling. The leaders of the Bangladesh National Coordinating Council of trade unions, (BNCC, which represents the Bangladeshi affiliates of the international textile workers’ federation, the ITGLWF) have demanded the arrest and trial of the factory’s owner. They are also demanding a payment of 200,000 takas (US$ 3,700) for the family of each worker who died and 100,000 takas for the families of each worker injured. “The employer, Ali Akbar Chowdhury, broke the law on at least three counts” says Z.M. Kamrul Anam, the President of the Bangladesh Textile Workers’ League. Badruddoza Nizam, General Secretary of the Garment Tailors Workers’ League adds “he employed children under 14, he paid wages below the legal minimum of 930 takas and he locked his factory’s doors”. The Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Mrs. Sheikh Hasina, expressed her condolences for the victims of the tragedy and urged the owners of the factory to protect their workers’ lives and compensate the victims. Will the government and employers of Bangladesh learn their lesson this time?

                                                                         By Samuel Grumiau in Dhaka