Two years after Bangladesh factory collapse, a struggle to set things right
DHAKA, Bangladesh — The thrum of needles filled the expansive factory floor as machines embroidered small hearts on thousands of pieces of fabric. Piles of tiny distressed jeans for children covered a table at Alif Embroidery Village, a factory of 1,800 workers on the outskirts of Dhaka that makes clothes for international brands such as H&M and Gap.
One by one, a young man embossed the jeans’ inner waistbands by hand with an H&M label and the words “Conscious & Denim” in silver lettering. Nearby, workers methodically screen printed the words “Holly Whyte” on tank tops and added layers of glitter. Young women in colorful saris blow-dried the letters by hand.
But amid the daily garment bustle, another kind of work was being carried out. On the ground floor, engineers and construction workers climbed into a gaping hole around a concrete pillar sprouting rebar. More than 30 concrete columns will be reinforced in this six-story building over several months. Holes cut in the ceiling awaited the installation of a high-tech smoke alarm system. And newly installed fire doors still had plastic wrapping around their edges.
Two years after the world’s worst garment factory disaster, Bangladesh’s garment industry is immersed in an urgent, massive effort to bring factories up to international safety standards. Inspections of more than 2,700 of 3,500 export facilities had been completed by the end of March, and “remediation” — correcting the litany of problems — is underway.
Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/bangladesh-garment-industry-pushes-to-meet-deadlines-on-safety-standards/2015/04/22/b72ca9f0-e87b-11e4-8581-633c536add4b_story.html