For the 17th day, rescue
and recovery workers are searching through the nine-story building's
tangled wreckage in Savar, a suburb of the capital, Dhaka. During the
first several days of dangerous and painstaking work, they got more than
2,400 people out of the rubble alive.
But since then, they
haven't found any more survivors. The past 11 days have focused on the
grim task of retrieving dead bodies still buried in the heap of broken
concrete, many of them so severely decomposed that authorities struggle
to identify them.
As more bodies were
recovered on Friday, the total number of people confirmed dead rose to
1,039, said Maj. Zihadul Islam, a fire service official.
The owners of the
building and the factories are under investigation over accusations they
ordered workers to enter the premises on the day of the collapse
despite cracks in the structure the day before.
Lax safety standards
The Bangladeshi
government has faced criticism for failing to improve the lax safety
standards in the country's thousands of garment factories where millions
of people work.
The Savar building
collapse happened five months after a fire at a garment factory near
Dhaka killed more than 100 people. And on Wednesday, eight people died
in a fire at another factory in the Dhaka area.
The European Union has
threatened to take trade action against Bangladesh if it doesn't take
concrete steps to improve health and safety conditions for workers.
Western retailers and
clothing brands that source their products from Bangladeshi factories
are also under pressure to subject their supply chains to greater
scrutiny.
No comments:
Post a Comment