Seven years on, garment workers continue to work in appalling conditions for poverty pay in Bangladeshi sweatshops, the lessons of the Rana Plaza building collapse, that killed 1,138 people and caused global outrage, are still being learnt.
On this anniversary, a rescue team that once dug victims from the rubble of the eight-storey sweatshop in Dhaka has remobilised to feed desperate factory workers thrown into destitution by the impact of coronavirus.
Inside a Bangladesh Sweatshop
In February, No Sweat gain rare access inside a Bangladeshi sweatshop and witnessed the reality of life on the ground producing clothes for the western markets.
This was one of the thousands of small workshops scattered around the country where a few dozen people work for a slave wage in cramped, unhealthy conditions, an area of subcontracted factories where no Western buyers visit.
In a room not much larger than a garage, lit by a few hanging bulbs and ventilate by a few screen-less windows, dozens of people were crammed in among piles of T-shirt and sewing machines.
We learned that each T-shirt made sold for 13 taka, – about 12 pence in British money – churned out by 30 workers producing 2,000 a day, some 66 T-shirts each.
We could see young children among the adults, at least one not more than 10 years old. But, later we were told that most of the workers in that small sweatshop were under 18. Child labour, while illegal, is still rampant in Bangladesh
Workers in this factory were earning 5,000 taka per month – barely £50. The legal minimum wage in the garment industry is £80 per month, but outside the city centre, in the slums where government inspectors fail to visit, the minimum wage is rarely paid.
Fighting the Impact of COVID-19
Since our visit a global pandemic has wreaked havoc on the Bangladesh garment industry, and the country has been in lockdown for the past month.
Workers, like the ones we met in that sweatshop on the outskirts of the capital, live without even basic social insurance, and are now facing a desperate situation since their meagre income dried up.
Fears of food shortages have led our partners, Oporajeo, that make our No Sweat T-shirts and which was formed by survivors and rescuers of Rana Plaza, to remobilise.
As the memory of Rana Plaza remains, new efforts are being made to rescue garment workers, this time from the threat of starvation. Since this crisis began we have received news of people fighting over food and literally gathering scraps of rice off the floor.
In an effort to steam the impact of food shortages, Oporajeo has now distributed over 5,000 meals to garment workers that have lost their homes, unable to pay their rent, and given out over 500 food ration parcels to local families affected by the crisis.
No Sweat campaigns for change: the reality is that these workers would be far more able to withstand the impact of this pandemic if they had been a living wage, and if brands didn’t shirk their responsibilities and abandon the factories to their own fate by cancelling order with billions of dollars.
We fear that by the time this crisis is over the numbers killed by the impact of COVID-19 will be far beyond the poor 1,138 that died on this day in 2013 at Rana Plaza.
Read the full story at Ethical Consumer, and donate here to help support the relief effort in Bangladesh.