The Ready Made Garment (RMG) industry has been placed the largest export earnings of Bangladesh where more than 5000 garment factories are running, employing over 4 million people of which more than 80% workers are women. RMG industry is considered as the back bone of the country’s economy-The main strength of RMG sector in Bangladesh is poorly paid garment workers.
Bangladesh, a lower cost emerging economy, where ready made garment (RMG) manufacturing and export has become a lifeline for both urban and rural people. It is the only major labor intensive sector of the country with huge employment-generating potential and the biggest source of remittance earnings. Nonetheless, the several disasters that have occurred in garment factories, claiming thousands of lives, have notoriously become the subject of much concern recently, both in the country itself, as well as internationally among the globally renowned buyers, trade unions, and monitoring authorities. As a result, despite the phenomenal success of the RMG industry in Bangladesh in the last two decades, workplace accidents have led to a downturn in the growth of this sector in thepast few years. The industry has been plagued by building collapses, frequent fires, and other avoidable industrial incidents. Only in the last four years, almost 4,500 garment workers were injured, crushed, burnt, trampled or killed in preventable workplace accidents.
The recent worst-ever industrial accident in the country, the collapse of Rana Plaza in 2013, caused the deaths of 1,129workers and the life-threatening injuries of 2,515 workers, and the fire at Tazreen Fashions in 2012, caused the deaths of 117 workers and severely injured a further 200 workers.
These accidents have not only shocked the entire nation, but also the other nations of the world, stimulating outrage among people at the failure to ensure a safe and healthy work environment.
We just want a safe environment for our fashion worker. No more died for Fashion.