The Clean Clothes Campaign has called on the Government of Bangladesh to create a national employment injury insurance scheme for the country’s garment workers on the five-year anniversary of the Aswad factory fire.
Six months after the Rana Plaza tragedy, seven workers died and over 50 were injured in a fire in the Aswad Composite Textile Mill in October 2013. While a worldwide campaign began to ensure compensation for the families of the Rana Plaza workers, the alliance says families affected by the Aswad fire were left with nothing, and have yet to receive a single penny in compensation.
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According to Clean Clothes Campaign, since the Rana Plaza collapse, over 540 workers have been killed and injured in factory incidents in Bangladesh.
The alliance is now calling on the Bangladesh Government and others involved in the industry to create a national employment injury insurance scheme that would cover all workers in Bangladesh.
“Over 130 countries in the world cover employment injury as part of their social security system, but Bangladesh is not one of them, although the scheme is affordable,” says Ben Vanpeperstraete, lobby and advocacy coordinator at Clean Clothes Campaign. “Contribution to a national employment injury insurance scheme would amount to about 0.005% of the retail price of a garment. Employers would have to contribute about 0.3% of the wage sum. International buying brands should support this by factoring these costs into their pricing with factories.
“Less than the price of a basic T-shirt per year could insure a worker against insecurity and the worst forms of poverty after a workplace tragedy.”
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By GlobalDataIn 2015, the Government of Bangladesh committed to work on an employment injury insurance scheme with the support of the International Labour Organization (ILO). Prime minister Sheikh Hasina in 2017 furthermore reiterated her resolution to bring an employment injury insurance scheme to Bangladesh as a sustainable solution to address the issue of compensation after workplace incidents. Three years since the initial commitment, however, the progress on the side of the government is limited, the alliance says
Bangladeshi labour rights activist Kalpona Akter adds: “All these disasters we have seen, with difficult compensation process and only limited options for compensation in Bangladesh labour law show how much we need a national employment injury insurance scheme. Union federations and workers’ rights organisations in Bangladesh demand that the government pass legislation to make this possible and to make a national employment injury insurance scheme operational as soon as possible.”
Clean Clothes Campaign says the government needs to table legislation for an employment injury insurance scheme; to put in place a bridging solution to cover workers injured in workplace incidents in the last five years, which can serve as a pilot for the eventual scheme; and to start implementing a functioning system in 2019.
“We believe that the establishment of a national employment injury insurance scheme and a bridging solution would be the realisation of one of the major lessons learned after the Rana Plaza collapse and end the insecurity and dire poverty of the workers that were killed and injured at the workplace in the five years since the collapse,” adds Vanpeperstraete.
