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US$40m fund set up for Rana Plaza victims
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Four global retailers, along with manufacturers and labor groups, have agreed to set up a US$40 million compensation fund for victims of Bangladesh’s Rana Plaza disaster in Dhaka that killed 1,135 people.
Retailers Primark, El Corte Ingles, Loblaw and Bonmarche have pledged to contribute to the fund following the collapse of the garment factory complex in April, the world’s worst industrial tragedy.
“A fund has been established to compensate the victims, injured workers and dependants of the deceased of the Rana Plaza collapse,” said Lejo Sibbel from the International Labor Organization which helped broker the agreement reached last month.
“An estimated US$40 million will be required to compensate the victims and their beneficiaries,” said Sibbel, who is based in Dhaka.
“To finance the payments to victims, international brands and retailers are making voluntary contributions into the fund, which is also open to contributions from any other international donors,” he said.
The agreement comes after talks between owners of clothing brands and labor activist groups on a compensation deal ended in failure in Geneva in September.
The collapse of the 9-story complex on the outskirts of Dhaka, where workers stitched clothes for top Western retailers, highlighted the often appalling conditions and lack of rights for workers at Bangladesh’s 4,500 garment factories.
Bangladesh’s US$22 billion garment industry is the world’s second largest after China’s and employs four million workers, most of them women.
More than 100 European and US retailers pledged to improve safety in the wake of the tragedy, but a deal on compensation for families of workers and those injured has remained elusive.
Families have received some compensation from Anglo-Irish retailer Primark as well as from the Bangladesh government.
Under the new agreement, families are expected to receive the first payments in February, according to Ineke Zeldenrust of Clean Clothes Campaign, an Amsterdam-based textile rights group which also signed the arrangement. Although Spanish-based giant El Corte Ingles, Primark, Canadian company Loblaw and British retailer Bonmarche have signed up, it is not known how much they will contribute.
Roy Ramesh, head of the Bangladesh chapter of international worker association IndustriALL, hailed the agreement as a landmark step toward ending “decades of injustice” for Bangladeshi garment workers. But Ramesh said he hoped more retailers whose clothes were made at the Rana Plaza complex would also come on board.
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