One woman, Rashida Begum, kept her distance. She wore a bright-orange sari and clutched a laminated picture against her chest. “My daughter,” she said when I approached. Her name was Nasima; she was 16 years old and had earned $110 a month sewing pants for New Wave Bottoms. The day before the accident, Nasima and her fellow workers had been sent home early when huge cracks were spotted in the walls. Her mother said Nasima was so scared that she couldn’t eat, but as the family breadwinner, she had little choice but to return to work when her bosses ordered her back. She didn’t want to lose her job.
Now in dire need of financial help, Rashida returns to the site with the hope that someone may be there to offer answers. Some days, she rides a bus to Dhaka from her home in Savar to join the protesters rallying for compensation in front of the downtown headquarters of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers Exporters Association (BGMEA), the powerful trade body that represents the $20 billion-a-year industry. A black banner out front reads: We Will Not Forget You. But Rashida has little chance of being compensated. Because Nasima’s body wasn’t recovered intact, she lacks proof that her daughter was among the dead. So she goes home empty-handed.
I would run into Rashida several times in the next few weeks, always wearing the same ragged clothes and vacant look, her daughter’s picture facing outward. Her presence came to symbolize for me the failure of authorities and foreign companies to adequately address the single deadliest event in the history of the garment industry. Five months on, sweeping promises about improving factory safety and cracking down on illegal subcontracting remain hamstrung by scant resources and a near-total lack of coordination among parties. Victims’ compensation ranges from inconsistent to nonexistent. According to the Bangladesh Institute of Labor Studies, none of the 4,000 families affected by the tragedy have received the full payments promised by the government or the BGMEA. Although several dozen amputees have, amid great fanfare, received payouts from an ad hoc relief fund administered by the prime minister, the money has all but dried up.
Although they’ve been promised more, families of the confirmed dead have received settlements of just $1,250 so far from the government relief fund, a paltry sum for human life “even by [Bangladesh’s] low standards,” says Sara Hossain, a lawyer working on behalf of victims. Families could potentially get more via a special tribunal if the government would convene one. But the influence of the garment industry is too great.