DESPITE the elapse of one hundred days after the Rana Plaza tragedy, a large number of workers who survived the disaster still remain without any help. Many workers who have been left without livelihoods after the disaster thought that promises of help and rehabilitation made by the BGMEA and the government should be materialised immediately.
Over one thousand employees of the collapsed factories gathered at the site at Savar on Friday for the unveiling of a monument built in memory of the victims on the 100th day of the worst industrial disaster to take place in Bangladesh's history. A group of youths have built this 10 feet high monument called "Protibade-Protirodhe" (in protest and in resistance). The monument represents the farmers and factory workers, said Antu Modak, who designed it.
The nine-storied Rana Plaza that housed five garment factories crumbled and collapsed on April 24 killing 1,131 workers and injuring thousands more. It took the army and local volunteers 20 days to rescue 2,438 people from the underlying debris of the building.
Even after one hundred days into the incident, the BGMEA, which should have been the most spontaneous in its reaction to rehabilitate the workers, was found to be more inactive than the government and other organisations, revealed an independent monitoring report, prepared by the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) on the Rana Plaza tragedy on Saturday.
As reported the leaders of the apex body have been saying that they are unable to help the families of the missing workers and surprisingly they are showing reluctance in sharing the cost of the tests. To some extent, compensation promised by the government to bereaved families of workers killed at the site is contingent on DNA reports and these cases will presumably be dealt with once reports are duly processed.
In the last few days, some workers' organisations and the victims of Rana Plaza have been demanding Eid bonus for the injured workers, but the BGMEA did not respond, observed the CPD.
The donation made by BGMEA to the Prime Minister's Fund for the deceased workers of Rana Plaza was not from the funds of the organisation but rather from the insurance claims of the workers, suspects an independent monitoring report. It says: "It is important to know whether the donation of BGMEA to the Prime Minister's Fund (Tk 30m) is the insurance claims of the workers or its fresh fund. A simple calculation is: families of 1,131 workers are supposed to receive an insurance benefit of Tk113.1m."
So, the announcement that the Prime Minister will pay Tk100,000 for each worker seems to be the insurance claim of the firm against the dead workers. In fact, it is suspected that the BGMEA maintained the process of taking out group insurance by providing a lump sum amount.
We believe the government should ask BGMEA to speed up the process to ensure that the Rana Plaza workers are compensated without any further delay.