Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety has started fresh inspection at its listed garment factories following the complaints from the workers immediately after the Saturday’s earthquake. The Alliance is mindful of the impacts an earthquake of the magnitude of 7.8 that hit Kathmandu can have on structures like ready-made-garment (RMG) factories in Bangladesh, the North American buyers’ brands initiative said in a statement. “Fresh inspections must now be executed to ensure the structural safety of factories, and we have assembled a team of structural engineers, led by our Chief Safety Officer, to visit each building where there is a concern within the next 48 hours,” it added. The Alliance has received several calls to our helpline, Amader Kotha (Our Voice), from workers concerned about cracks in factory buildings following the earthquake. Our teams on the ground in Dhaka are working to ensure that all of the works to date to make RMG factories safe have not been impacted by the earthquake, it said. This earthquake and its aftershocks should be an indication of just how difficult it can be to ensure the structural safety of buildings in an earthquake zone. “While we have not yet seen immediate damage at our ready-made-garment factories in Bangladesh, this does not mean those buildings are structurally sound following this earthquake and its aftershocks,” it noted further. The Alliance has urged all factories in Bangladesh to work with them to undertake immediate structural safety inspections and to prevent workers from entering factories until they are deemed structurally safe. Officials of the Alliance’s Dhaka office said they got complaints of having cracks in some 21 garment factories and they have already visited 13 out of them and found no safety risk there.
Source: https://www.thefinancialexpress-bd.com/2015/04/28/90610
