Six years on from Bangladesh’s Rana Plaza tragedy, more than half of survivors remain unemployed due to the physical injuries and psychological impact of the disaster, new figures show.
An annual survey of survivors’ health, wellbeing and economic security, published today (24 April) by international charity ActionAid, found that despite the international outcry following the building collapse at Rana Plaza, which killed 1,138 mainly female garment workers, the unemployment rate among the survivors has increased almost 10% in the last two years.
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The survey tracked 1,400 Rana Plaza survivors since 2013, interviewing 200 of them.
20.5% of those surveyed said that their physical health condition is getting worse, while 51% remain unemployed due to their physical injuries and poor mental health. In addition, of the unemployed survivors, 74% could not get back to work due to physical injuries and 27% due to poor mental health – as a direct result of the incident – while 10.5% are still suffering from trauma.
Meanwhile, ActionAid says only 15.5% of the employed survivors have returned to the garment industry.
The figures come as the global garment industry stops to reflect on the tragic events that took place in Bangladesh six years ago today, when some 1,138 garment workers died when the eight-storey factory building complex at Rana Plaza in the industrial outskirts of Dhaka, Bangladesh, collapsed, injuring more than 2,000 others.
According to non-profit organisation Solidarity Centre, about 500 workers have been injured and several dozens killed in Bangladesh’s garment industry since Rana Plaza.
“Today’s new research from ActionAid shows that survivors still remain economically insecure as a result of the Rana Plaza tragedy,” says Farah Kabir, country director of ActionAid Bangladesh. “Compensation is piecemeal, which has slowed down the rehabilitation of the injured. Promised funding for a hospital for the injured has not been forthcoming. Six years on from the crisis, injuries which may have been treatable have now set in as life-long ailments.”
ActionAid, part of the Clean Clothes Campaign, is calling for the government of Bangladesh to establish and legislate for an employment injury insurance system, which would mean compensation would be distributed immediately following a workplace incident.
In addition, to address what it calls the “high prevalence of gender based violence (GBV) increasingly revealed to be perpetrated against women at work,” ActionAid and partners are also demanding the International Labour Organization (ILO) agrees a convention against violence and harassment in the workplace.
Click here to read just-style’s step-by-step look at the changes that have been made to improve worker and building safety within Bangladesh’s ready-made garment industry since the Rana Plaza disaster.
