Impact of Readymade Garments on the Economy of Bangladesh free essay sample

But thisis not the end of their suffering – they faceabuse in the workplace, sexual harass-ment and rape, and even death. Death Trap On 23 February 2006 a ? re broke out at KTS Garments in Chittagong. Specialarrangements were made on that day foran emergency night shift; food wasarranged for about a thousand workers. But how many of the workers could escapethe deadly ? re? Nobody knows for sure,even today. I personally visited the factory three days after; yet I met many who werelooking for their daughters, sisters or rela-tives who were working in hat factory. Even after three days nobody was allowedto enter the factory. I managed to take aquick look in different areas up to thethird ? oor. Hundreds of small bags usually carried by female workers were here andthere. I found those totally empty. Whohave stolen the â€Å"precious† things fromthese bags? No one was allowed to enterafter the ? re broke out; the factory wasstrictly guarded by police and the Rapid Action Battalion ( RAB ). We will write a custom essay sample on Impact of Readymade Garments on the Economy of Bangladesh or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page The workers didnot have much money to be looted. Theonly thing they had – very important tothem – was their ID ard, which was theonly proof of their identity and their link with the factory. That was the main proof to identify and count the dead and injured,and to make a claim for compensation. The owners had every reason to takethose cards away. Possible claims for com-pensation also explain the unwillingnessof many employers to give appointmentletters to the workers. Since the early 1990s, more than athousand people, mostly teenage girls,lost their lives in different garment facto-ries because of either? re, or collapse of an un-authorised factory build-ing, or secret killing by goons or in police ? ing. Some factories reported-ly kept their gates closedduring ? re incidents. On6 January 2005, duringa ? re at Shaan Knittingand Processing in Naray-anganj, all the gates of the building werekept locked. The incident claimed 23 lives. The collapse of a nine-story garmentfactory building at Savar near Dhaka on11 April 2005 caused more than 100 workerdeaths and another 100 workers missing. Suddenly turned into a mass grave, thefactory had been producing nearly 80,000items of clothes annually for the marketsof Europe and the US This building wasconstructed without proper authorisation. A ? re in a building that housed SaiemFashions and other garment factories,killed three workers and injuring 50 inMarch 2006. Three more factory accidentsoccurred in early 2006, two in Dhaka andone in Chittagong, leaving at least 142 workers killed and more than 500 injuredmany of them disabled for life. Newspaperreports made it clear that all these acci-dents took place due to lack of propersafety measures a t the factories. Thesereports also revealed the fact that according to of? ial statistics, only threeinspectors are engaged in inspectingsafety measures at as many as 15,000factories under the Dhaka divisional fac-tory inspection of? ce. And only 20 in-spectors are now deployed to inspectaround 50,000 registered factories in thecountry – four of them are working at thehead of? ce, six at the Dhaka divisional of-? ce, and three at Chittagong, Khulna andRajshahi divisional of? ces ( Daily Star ,28 February 2006). The following list of factory ? res anddeaths was published in The Daily Star on27 February 2010 after another deadly fac-tory ? e. Development or Destruction, Essays onGlobal Hegemony, Corporate Grabbing and Bang-ladesh, Sraban. New Age (2010): â€Å"Exploiting the Economy Builders† by Mohiuddin Alamgir, New Age Extra , 13-19 August, www. newagebd. com. Sobhan, Rehman and Nasreen Khundker, ed. (2001): Globalisation and Gender (Dhaka: UPL). Sweatfree (2010): â€Å" Fighting Poverty Wages in Bangla-desh† at http://www. sweatfree. org/docs/ene-miesofthenation. pdf, December. Workers World (2006): â€Å"Garment Strike in Bangla-desh: Whose Responsibility, Whose Interests? †,June. . ? . ? . . . impact of readymade garments on the economy of bangladesh