Bangladesh clamps down on fire hazard factories
Daily Times
DHAKA: Special mobile courts and fire inspectors will tour Bangladesh to ensure garment factory owners are complying with safety laws after a series of fires left at least 70 dead in the past two months, the government said Saturday.
Defaulters face up to three years in jail if convicted by the mobile courts, which are to be headed by magistrates, a government statement said
The spate of fires had created an “adverse impact on the country’s economic development and have smeared the government’s image,†it added. Last month, 61 people were killed and more than 100 injured in the country’s worst industrial fire, which spread through a locked four-storied garment factory in the southern port city of Chittagong.
False alarms also saw stampedes in half a dozen factories, killing three people and injuring more than 200, mostly women who work for a monthly wage of 20 to 30 dollars a month.
In another fire, at a textile factory near Dhaka, six people died and some 20 were injured.
Bangladesh’s massive textile sector has been booming since a global agreement to remove quotas on clothes and other garments came into force last year.
Textiles account for 80 percent of the country’s 9.3 billion dollars in annual exports and over 40 percent of the country’s industrial jobs. afp
