High price paid for cheap UK clothes
Guardian Unlimited, UK
Workers endure up to 84-hour weeks to survive
Karen McVeigh in Dhaka
Monday July 16, 2014
The Guardian
Two toddlers sit on a rusting grille platform built on bamboo stilts at the entrance to one of Bangladesh’s fastest-growing housing developments.
Three feet below them lies a festering mound of rubbish, into which a gushing waste pipe from a nearby factory discharges. Beyond them are rows and rows of windowless, airless, corrugated iron rooms, stacked on top of each other like chicken coops.
This is Begunbari in Dhaka, the heart of the city’s industrial district and home to many of its garment workers, including those who make clothes for some of Britain’s best-known high street brands, including Asda, Tesco and Primark.
