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Owner couple, 11 others charged over bangladesh factory blaze
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Bangladesh police yesterday brought charges over the nation’s deadliest-ever garment factory fire, accusing the owners and 11 others of negligence that led to the loss of 111 lives.
Police charged owners Delwar Hossain and his wife, along with security guards and managers, over the blaze 13 months ago that gutted the nine-story Tazreen factory on the outskirts of Dhaka where workers stitched clothes for Western retailers.
“Delwar and his wife Mahmuda Akter ... and 11 others have been charged with death due to negligence,” AKM Mohsinuzzaman Khan, the police investigator in the case, said.
The factory, in the Ashulia industrial district, supplied clothes to a variety of international brands including US giant Walmart, Dutch retailer C&A and ENYCE, a label owned by US rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs.
The fire on November 24 last year was the country’s worst at a garment factory and shone an international spotlight on appalling safety conditions in an industry worth more than US$20 billion a year.
The industry suffered an even greater tragedy just months later when the Rana Plaza garment factory complex collapsed in Dhaka’s outskirts, killing 1,135 people in the world’s worst industrial disaster.
Bangladesh pledged to clean up the industry after that disaster in April, and over 100 top Western retailers have signed up to new safety pacts to monitor their operations.
Victims of the factory fire, mostly women who were paid as little as US$37 a month, found themselves overcome by smoke or were forced to jump from windows on upper floors.
Managers and security guards were charged over their insistence that workers return to their duties even though smoke was billowing from the ground floor where the fire started, said Khan.
“Fire alarms rang as soon as the blaze broke out. Panicked workers tried to leave the factory before the fire spread,” Khan said. “But the managers and the security guards told the workers that it was nothing serious. The alarms were meant for fire drills.”
Khan said it was “possibly the first time” a garment plant owner has been charged over a fire at one of the nation’s 4,500 factories, where deadly accidents are common.
The 13 people are charged with committing culpable homicide not amounting to murder and causing death due to negligence, said police Inspector Mohammad Asaduzzaman. All 13 could face life in prison if convicted.
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