Those behind increased work accidents escape prison
There have already been 200 fatal accidents this year. Factory owners do not respect security norms but no law provides for their arrest. Activists say: "You are cannot call them accidents, they are deliberate homicides".
Dhaka (AsiaNews/DS) Accidents at work are on the rise in Bangladesh, where factory owners persist in violating security norms in the certainty that they will never go to prison. In the first two months of this year alone, around 200 fatal accidents were reported by the media; throughout all of last year, the press reported 289 accidents, with 1006 people seriously injured. And the actual number of accidents is definitely higher.
Statistics supplied by the factory inspection office of the government are much lower: they say 163 people were killed and a few thousands injured in 3,412 serious, and 20,414 minor factory accidents from 1995 to 2004. A number of sources concerned dubbed these figures simply "ridiculous". But while statistics indicate an increase in the frequency of accidents, the government is not considering ways to stop the trend; instead, for years, it has been assessing a bill of law which provides for increased compensation for victims.
In a meeting with the national media, the Bangladesh Occupational Safety, Health and Environment Foundation (OSHE) said the sectors most at risk were: garments, construction, garments, construction, ship-breaking and rice mills. The major causes of accidents were found to be boiler blasts, fire sparked by electric short-circuit, stampede from fire panic and building collapse, falls from scaffolding, inhaling lethal gas and physical contact with exposed machinery.
Many human rights activists say the accidents were mostly provoked by a "wilful" violation of security norms by employers, who were never prosecuted. Shirin Akhter, president of a women's rights watchdog, "you cannot call them accidents". She added: "They happen because, to speed up production and inflate profit, factory owners do not comply with even the minimum safety standards and deny workers their right to have safety gears, and safe work procedure and environment."Usually, she said, such businessmen got away without paying any penalty: more often than not, inquiries into accidents were not concluded or buried.
Chief Factory Inspector Serajuddin said: "Owners violate safety laws as the punishment is but nominal. After several accidents, we make them pay compensation to the victims, but they have never been jailed." There are no laws making employers personally liable. The chief inspector said that for 10 years, the government has been studying a bill providing for more compensation to families. The current law for workers' compensation, dating back to 1923, provides compensation of 250 euros per family of victims of occupational accidents.
But this is not a solution. A Japanese expert on industrial safety, Toyoki Nakao, highlighted the difference between his country and Bangladesh. There are 20 factory inspection offices in Tokyo alone. The number of industrial safety inspectors engaged across Japan is about 6,000 against 1,600 causalities. In Bangladesh there are only 20 inspectors for thousands of medium and large factories.
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25/02/2022 14:00
