The Hamilton Spectator

A WORLD THAT SUDDENLY EXPLODES

Surviving the Bangladesh factory collapse

- GILLIAN WONG, CHRIS BLAKE AND TIM SULLIVAN

SAVAR, BANGLADESH Merina was so tired. It had been three days since the garment factory where she worked had collapsed around her, three days since she’d moved more than a few inches. In that time she’d had nothing to eat and just a few sips of water. The cries for help had long since subsided. The moans of the injured had gone silent.

But it was fatigue she feared the most. If sleep took her, Merina was certain she would never wake up.

“I can’t fall asleep,” the 21-year-old thought to herself, her face inches from a concrete slab that had once been the ceiling above her. She’d spent seven years working beneath that ceiling, sewing T-shirts and pants destined for stores from Paris to Los Angeles.

She worked 14 hours a day, six days a week, with her two sisters. She made the equivalent of about $16 a week.

Now she lay on her back in the sweltering heat, worrying for her sisters and herself. And as the bodies of her former coworkers began to rot, the stench filled the darkness.

The eight-story, concrete-andglass Rana Plaza was one of hundreds of similar buildings in the crowded, potholed streets of Savar, an industrial suburb of Bangladesh’s capital and the centre of the country’s $20 billion garment industry.

If Bangladesh remains one of the world’s poorest nations, it is no longer a complete economic cripple.

Instead, it turned its poverty to its advantage, heralding workers who make some of the world’s lowest wages and attracting some of the world’s leading brands.

But this same economic miracle has plunged Bangladesh into a vicious downward spiral of keeping costs down, as major retailers compete for customers who want ever cheaper clothes. It is the workers who often pay the price in terms of safety and labour conditions.

The trouble at Rana Plaza began Tuesday of last week, when workers spotted long cracks in at least one of the building’s concrete pillars.

The trails of chipped plaster led to a chunk of concrete, about the size of a shoe box, that had broken away. The police were called. Inspectors came to check on the building, which housed shops on the lower floors and five crowded clothing factories on the upper ones.

At 10 a.m., the 3,200 garment workers were told to leave early for lunch. At 2 p.m., they were told to leave for the day.

Few of the workers — mostly migrants from desperatel­y poor villages — asked why. Some were told the building had unexplaine­d electricit­y issues.

The best factory buildings are well-constructe­d and regularly inspected. The workers are trained what to do in case of an emergency.

Rana Plaza was not one of those buildings. The owner, Mohammed Sohel Rana, was a feared neighbourh­ood political enforcer who had branched into real estate.

In 2010, he was given a permit to build a five-storey building on a piece of land that had once been a swamp. He built eight stories.

Rana came quickly after the crack was found. So did the police, some reporters and officials from the country’s largest garment industry associatio­n.

Rana refused to close the building. “There is nothing serious,” he said. The workers were told to return the next morning, as scheduled, at 8 a.m.

Merina, a petite woman with a round, girlish face and shoulderle­ngth hair, never saw the crack.

She comes from Biltala, a tiny village in southwest Bangladesh, where there is electricit­y but little else.

Her father is a landless labourer who grows rice and wheat on rented farmland and, when he can, travels the seven hours by train to Dhaka to sell cucumbers, cauliflowe­r and other vegetables on the street.

When she was 15, she moved to Dhaka. Some of her aunts were already working in garment factories, and she quickly had a job.

For millions of Bangladesh­is, the garment factories of Dhaka are a dream. Every year, at least 300,000 rural residents — and perhaps as many as 500,000 — migrate to the Dhaka area, already one of the most crowded cities on the planet.

Poverty remains the norm across most of rural Bangladesh, where less than 60 per cent of adults are literate. To them, the steady wage of a garment factory — even with mini-

Instead, Bangladesh turned its poverty to its advantage, heralding workers who make some of the world’s lowest wages.

mum wage less than $40 a month — is enough to start saving up for a scooter, or a dowry, or a better school for the next generation.

Merina’s two sisters joined her in Savar, where women make up the vast majority of the factory workers. Here, the poor learn quickly that it is not their role to question orders. And girls learn quickly that nearly all decisions are made by men.

So for a woman like Merina, who like many Bangladesh­is goes by one name only, there are generation­s of culture telling her not to question a command to go back to work.

When some factory workers did speak up Wednesday of last week, they were reminded that the end of the month — and their paycheques — were coming soon. The message was clear: If you don’t work, you won’t get paid.

“Don’t speak bullshit!” a factory manager told a 26-year-old garment worker named Sharma, she said, when she worried about going inside. “There is no problem.” Around 8:40 a.m. Wednesday, when the factories had been running for 40 minutes or so, the lights suddenly went off in the building. It was nothing unusual.

Bangladesh’s electricit­y network is poorly maintained and desperatel­y overburden­ed.

Rana Plaza, like most of the factories in the area, had its own backup generator, sometimes used dozens of times in a single day.

A jolt went through the building when the generator kicked on. Again, this was nothing unusual. Eighteen-year-old Baezid — who uses only one name — was chatting with a friend as they checked an order of short-sleeved shirts.

He’d come from the countrysid­e with his family — mother, father and two uncles — just seven months earlier.

Since then, he’d worked seven days a week, from 8 a.m. to midnight. His salary was about $55 a month. But he could more than double that by working so many hours, since overtime pays .37 cents an hour.

Sometime after the generator switched on another, far larger, jolt shook the floor violently. The building gave a deafening groan.

The pillars fell first, and one slammed against Baezid’s back. He found himself pinned from the waist down, unable to move.

He heard coworkers crying in the darkness. One coworker trapped nearby had a mobile phone, and the seven or eight people nearby took turns to call their families.

Baezid wept into the phone. “Rescue me!” he begged them.

Like a young boy, he kept thinking of his mother. He wanted to see her again.

In Bangladesh, people in need of help rarely think first of the police, or firefighte­rs, or anyone official.

Baezid called his family. So did other people. The state is so dysfunctio­nal here, so riven by corruption, bad pay and incompeten­ce, that ordinary people know they have a better chance of finding help by reaching out to their families.

Until Monday, when there was no hope left for survivors and heavy equipment was brought in to move tons of concrete, many of the rescuers working inside the rubble were volunteers. Or, In the case of Saiful Islam Nasar, they were just a guy from a small town who heard people needed help.

Nasar, a lanky mechanical engineer from a town about 300 kilometres away, runs a small volunteer associatio­n. The group offers first aid to people who have been in car accidents. During the monsoon rains, they help whoever they can.

When he saw the news, Nasar gathered 50 men, jumped on a train and reached Rana Plaza about 11 hours after the April 24 collapse.

He made his way into the rubble with a hammer and a hacksaw. In six days, he says he has rescued six people, and helped carry out dozens of bodies.

Told that he was a hero, he looked back silently.

Then he wept.

Merina was sitting at her knitting machine on the fourth floor, in the Phantom-TAC factory, when the world seemed to explode.

Pieces of the ceiling slammed down on her. She crawled in search of a place to hide, and found one: a section of the upstairs floor had crashed onto two toppled pillars, creating a small protected area.

Around 10 other men and women had the same idea, including Sabina, a close friend. The two women clutched hands and wept, thinking their lives would end.

As time passed, desperatel­y thirsty survivors began drinking their own urine. One person found a fallen drum of water and passed around what was left. Merina’s sisters had been luckier. Older sister Sharina ran out just in time. After a frantic search, she found 16-year-old Shewli, who had also escaped. But where was Merina? She borrowed a cellphone and called her father in their village.

Their parents booked tickets on the next train to Dhaka.

On Friday of last week, Merina finally began to hear the sounds of rescuers cutting through the slab above her with concrete saws.

She was put in an ambulance and people surrounded her.

“Don’t be afraid, you’re going to the hospital,” someone told her.

Factory owner Rana has been arrested. And the official death toll reached 512 on Friday.

 ??  ?? A GIRL CRIES FOR HER MISSING MOTHER AT THE SITE OF THE GARMENT BUILDING FACTORY THAT COLLAPSED IN SAVAR, NEAR DHAKA, BANGLADESH.
A GIRL CRIES FOR HER MISSING MOTHER AT THE SITE OF THE GARMENT BUILDING FACTORY THAT COLLAPSED IN SAVAR, NEAR DHAKA, BANGLADESH.
 ??  ?? RESCUERS HUNT FOR SURVIVORS AT THE GARMENT FACTORY THAT COLLAPSED ON
APRIL 24. MORE THAN 500 BODIES HAVE BEEN PULLED FROM THE DEBRIS.
RESCUERS HUNT FOR SURVIVORS AT THE GARMENT FACTORY THAT COLLAPSED ON APRIL 24. MORE THAN 500 BODIES HAVE BEEN PULLED FROM THE DEBRIS.
 ??  ?? MERINA, A SURVIVOR OF THE GARMENT FACTORY BUILDING COLLAPSE, IS COMFORTED BY HER FATHER IN HOSPITAL. SHE WAS TRAPPED FOR THREE DAYS.
MERINA, A SURVIVOR OF THE GARMENT FACTORY BUILDING COLLAPSE, IS COMFORTED BY HER FATHER IN HOSPITAL. SHE WAS TRAPPED FOR THREE DAYS.

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