Clean Clothes Campaign, a global alliance of worker rights groups, on Tuesday urged the Bangladesh government for introducing an injury insurance system, with the support of International Labour Organisation and brands, for industry workers.In a statement on five years of Rana Plaza building collapse, the largest alliance of global labour unions and non-governmental organisations in the garment industry called upon the government to fulfill its pledge for meaningful change that followed the Rana Plaza disaster by taking immediate action to establish such an insurance system.Clean Clothes Campaign is also one of the witness signatories of Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, a platform of European brands and labour rights groups which was formed after the Rana Plaza building collapse on April 24, 2013, that killed more than 1,100 people mostly garment workers. The rights group said that the government should take an interim insurance measure to cover the workers who were affected by the factory accidents that took place since the Rana Plaza disaster as it would take time to form an injury insurance scheme under the national legislation.Expressing solidarity with the families of the workers who died and were injured in the factory incidents since 2013, the CCC said that none of these incidents had the scale of the Rana Plaza collapse, and these workers’ fate has not received the same amount of international attention and outcry. The CCC also urged the global brands for signing Transition Accord saying that ‘…there is only one credible way for garment brands to ensure that the workers in their supply chain can work in safe factories: by signing the 2018 Transition Accord’.It also requested brands that already signed the 2018 Accord, to extend its protection to more workers in their supply chain, by adding their factories for home textile and knit and fabric accessories to the monitoring activities of the Accord.Ben Vanpeperstraete, advocacy coordinator at CCC said Accord has clearly showed that when brands were being held accountable for human rights in their supply chains, the progress is tremendous.‘Today is a day for the world to recommit to the promise that we cannot allow a tragedy like the Rana Plaza collapse to ever happen again. All stakeholders involved in the garment industry in Bangladesh must take responsibility to create and maintain the structures able to prevent it,’ the CCC spokesperson said.
