Bangladesh shuts 18 garment factories after disaster

Bangladesh has shut down 18 garment plants to prevent a repeat of last month's factory collapse outside Dhaka as the death toll from the disaster climbed past 800 on Wednesday. The announcement of the closures came days after Bangladesh agreed with the International Labour Organization to give safety "the highest consideration" amid fears that Western garment firms might start sourcing goods from elsewhere. "Sixteen factories have been closed down in Dhaka and two in Chittagong," textiles minister Abdul Latif Siddique told reporters in the capital, adding that more plants would be shut as part of strict new measures to ensure safety. "We'll ensure ILO standards in terms of compliance," said Siddique, who heads a newly created high-powered panel to inspect the impoverished country's 4,500 garment factories in an effort to avoid fresh disasters. "We have seen that those who claim to be the best compliant factories in Bangladesh have not fully abided by building regulations." The death toll from Bangladesh's worst industrial disaster hit 803 Wednesday. Brigadier General Siddiqul Alam Sikder told AFP the stench of bodies trapped in the lower floors and under beams indicated the toll would rise as cranes and bulldozers kept clearing debris. "We're expecting to find some bodies because we still haven't reached the bottom. We've finished around 70 percent of the job," Sikder said. Workers drawn from the army and fire service wore masks to ward off the smell as they continued to pull bodies from the rubble of the nine-storey building in the town of Savar, a suburb of Dhaka. More than 3,000 garment workers were on shift on April 24 when the Rana Plaza complex crumbled as they were turning out clothing for Western retailers such as Britain's Primark and the Spanish label Mango. A total of 2,437 people were rescued from the ruins, authorities say. Efforts to identify bodies were being hampered by their decomposition, officials said, adding that relief workers were taking DNA samples from the victims to match with relatives. Many bodies have been found in the staircases. Panicked workers had raced to stairwells in a rush to get out of the building after hearing a loud noise but the compound collapsed within five minutes, trapping them, officials said. The disaster was the latest in a string of deadly accidents to hit the nation's textile industry. In November, a factory fire killed 111 garment workers. The government at the weekend in a joint statement with the ILO and factory owners promised a labour law reform package that would allow "the right to collective bargaining" and provide for "occupational safety and health". A United Nations expert group Wednesday urged international clothing brands not to pull out of the country but to work together with the government, international organisations, and civil society to address working conditions. Pavel Sulyandziga, who heads the UN working group on business and human rights, said if companies are "linked with negative impacts on human rights through their suppliers, they have the responsibility to exercise their leverage as buyers to try to effect change". A preliminary government investigation blamed the collapse on the vibrations of giant electricity generators and police have arrested 12 people including the complex's owner and four garment factory owners in connection with the disaster. Impoverished Bangladesh is the world's second-largest garment exporter and the industry accounts for more than 40 percent of its industrial workforce and 80 percent of the nation's exports.