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Business Daily: Rana Plaza Two Years On

23/04/2015

Rana Plaza Two Years On

BBC World Service - Business Daily, Rana Plaza Two Years On

How much has changed for garment workers in Bangladesh after the Rana Plaza tragedy?

How much has changed for garment workers in Bangladesh after the Rana Plaza tragedy? We hear from campaigners, Bangladeshi workers and the Labour Minister.

Ed Butler looks back at the tragic disaster that some say marked a turning-point for the global fashion industry. It is two years this week since the Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh, one of the worst industrial accidents of modern times. The eight-storey factory building collapsed, leaving 1100 garment workers dead and thousands injured. Since then, labour groups, brands and politicians have promised better safety standards, and better rates of pay. But how much has really changed? 

We hear from campaigners, Bangladeshi workers and the Labour Minister. Dr Srinivas Reddy, country chief of the ILO, admits that still many so-called shadow factories remain off the radar. Plus, campaigner Ursula de Castro tells us she has been demanding greater transparency within the supply chain, not just in Bangladesh but around the world, so that consumers can be sure that the garments they buy are not the product of exploitation. Also Drazen Prelec, a professor at the Sloan School of Management at MIT who conducts neural imaging of the brains of clothes-shoppers, and others, to understand what happens when they go bargain-hunting tells us his research suggests that scooping a deal can be habit-forming.

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