THE three million textile workers in Bangladesh were given a day off work yesterday. The holiday, for which undoubtedly many will not have been paid, is not in celebration of anything, but rather to mourn the deaths of some 112 workers in a nine-story factory which burnt down Sunday in the capita Dhaka. The fact that many of these shocked and worried workers will not receive a penny for being forced to take a day off would be very much par for the course for the generally chaotic, and often dishonest and corrupt textile industry, which earns Bangladesh $20 billion a year. This represents over 80 percent of the country's exports. Two separate enquiries have been launched by the authorities and the police say they are mounting a murder investigation. Similar enquiries and police probes have been mounted after similar fires that have disfigured the national garment trade in recent years. While the odd prosecution and fine have resulted, absolutely nothing has been done to stop the industry from operating in unsafe and clearly illegal conditions. This latest blaze at the Tazreen factory demonstrates the colossal failure of both managers and the authorities to adhere to even half-decent standards. For a start, the building was only supposed to be three stories high. A further six floors had been added without proper fire exits and ladders. Thus some of those who perished on Sunday died of injuries they received when, trapped and in desperation, they threw themselves from the top of the building. So first and foremost, this is a crime that should be laid at the door of greedy owners who were prepared to boost profits at the expense of the lives of their workers. Hardly less culpable are the regulatory authorities, who either could not be bothered or had been suitably bribed to turn a blind eye to flagrant breaches of planning and safety regulations. Heads need to roll among these people who failed so miserably in their duties. If underpaid officials saw the serious consequences of their maladministration, they might take their responsibilities more seriously. There is however a further culprit in the shape of the international garment business that has pursued a consistent policy of outsourcing its production to the cheapest possible markets. China, once the preferred “confection” location, has thanks to rising wages priced itself out of consideration. Now it is India, Bangladesh and the Philippines which are the outsourcing locations of choice. The big names, like Walmart, make much of their insistence that their clothes and footwear are produced by properly-paid workers in decent conditions. Past allegations of child labor have been extremely embarrassing.Yet the Tazreen factory, it turns out, was acting as an unauthorized subcontractor to another Bangladeshi firm that Walmart had hired to make its garments. Walmart has expressed concern at this discovery. Yet if the American company had done its due diligence properly and monitored the production process effectively, Tazreen with its death trap factory would not have been working for them. The problem here is that consumers have become so used to cheap garments from major international outlets that these businesses have to drive down their production costs as low as possible. The thin margins they pay to entrepreneurs in the developing world do not encourage investment in proper, safe factories. Yet if these production facilities, worldwide, were all compelled to implement decent conditions, the increased cost would not disadvantage one country against another.
