DHAKA: Safety overhauls of Bangladesh’s garment factories were running behind schedule and none were considered totally safe two years after the Rana Plaza disaster, a global labor group said Thursday.
IndustriALL said thousands of factories were found to have some structural flaws following inspections carried out in the wake of the tragedy that killed more than 1,100 people.
The Swiss-based group said efforts to upgrade the factories were lagging despite some 200 mostly European retailers
“Important progress has been made, but the fact that all remediation is currently behind schedule, some over six months behind, is a serious problem,” IndustriALL said in a statement on the eve of Friday’s anniversary of the disaster.
“It is an unacceptable reality that not a single factory can yet be called 100 percent safe,” the group, which played a key role in sealing the agreement, said.
The nine-story Rana Plaza factory complex imploded on April 24, 2013 in one of the world’s worst industrial disasters.
The collapse triggered international outrage and put pressure on European and US brands who had placed orders to improve the woeful pay and conditions at Bangladesh’s 4,500 garment factories.
Two years on, nearly $25 million in compensation has been paid out to survivors and relatives of the dead.
More than 2,500 garment factories have been inspected for structural, fire and electrical safety since the disaster, the ILO said in a statement on Thursday.
Despite IndustriALL’s statement, Bangladesh Junior Labor Minister Mujibul Haque hailed progress made so far in improving the safety of Bangladesh’s $25 billion garment industry.
“Almost three quarters of garment factories have now been assessed for structural and fire safety with only a very small number being deemed too unsafe to operate,” he said at an event to mark the disaster.
The Bangladesh Garments Manufacturers and Exporters Association also said Thursday that major improvements had been made to factories, with only around one percent deemed too unsafe to repair and forced to shut down.
‘No Bangladesh garment firm totally safe’
‘No Bangladesh garment firm totally safe’
Federal judge accuses Trump administration of ‘terror’ against immigrants in scathing ruling
- The judge said that the White House had also “extended its violence on its own citizens”
- “The threats posed by the executive branch cannot be viewed in isolation”
CALIFRONIA: A federal judge has accused the Trump administration of terrorizing immigrants and recklessly violating the law in its efforts to deport millions of people living in the country illegally.
Citing the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota, the judge said that the White House had also “extended its violence on its own citizens.”
“The threats posed by the executive branch cannot be viewed in isolation,” US District Judge Sunshine Sykes in Riverside, California said in her scathing decision issued late Wednesday.
Sykes ordered the US Department of Homeland Security to provide detained immigrants around the country with notice of her earlier decisions that they may be eligible to seek release on bond.
Under past administrations, people with no criminal record could generally request a bond hearing before an immigration judge while their cases wound through immigration court unless they were stopped at the border. President Donald Trump ‘s White House reversed that policy in favor of mandatory detention.
Sykes, who was nominated by President Joe Biden, a Democrat, ruled in November and again in December that the change violated the law and extended her decision to immigrants nationwide. The Republican administration, however, has continued denying bond hearings.
That has prompted thousands of immigrants to file separate petitions in federal court seeking their release. More than 20,000 habeas corpus cases have been filed since Trump’s inauguration, according to federal court records analyzed by the AP.
An email Thursday to the Department of Homeland Security was not immediately returned.
Sykes said Wednesday by violating her decision, the administration had “wasted valuable time and resources” and deprived immigrants of their “liberty, economic stability, and fundamental dignity.”
She also slammed the claim that the immigration crackdown was removing the worst criminals, saying most of the people arrested did not fit that description.
“Americans have expressed deep concerns over unlawful, wanton acts by the executive branch,” she wrote. “Beyond its terror against noncitizens, the executive branch has extended its violence on its own citizens, killing two American citizens— Renée Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota.”
