Bangladeshi clothes factory had lost fire safety certification five months ago

By ANGUS HOWARTH
Published on 07/12/2012 08:27

A BANGLADESHI factory producing clothes for the Edinburgh Woollen Mill, Disney and a number of other major companies had lost its fire safety certification in June, five months before 112 workers died in a deadly blaze, a fire official has confirmed.

The owner of the Tazreen factory also admitted that he had only been granted permission to build a three-storey facility but had expanded it to eight, and was in the process of adding a ninth at the time the facility was hit by the fire.

Fire officials refused to renew the building’s fire safety certification because the factory did not have adequate safety arrangements, a Dhaka fire official said. No specific details of the violations were provided, the official added, because the case was still under investigation.

There were no fire exits for the 1400 workers in the factory, many of whom died after becoming trapped. Investigators have said that the death toll would have been far lower if there had been just a single emergency exit.

According to safety inspectors, major safety violations are commonplace in Bangladesh’s garment factories, which number over 4000 and are responsible for around 80 per cent of the country’s exports. and remain in operation because their powerful owners block any attempts to close them on safety grounds.