Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) has formed a committee to bring all the Rana Plaza victims under a same umbrella to compensate them following proper scrutiny.
BGMEA Vice President SM Mannan Kochi has been made the convener of the committee, which is comprised of the representatives from the Prime Minister’s Office, Labor and Employment Ministry and two other board members of the BGMEA.
The decision to forma such a committee was made at a BGMEA board meeting held on April 13 at its Karwan Bazaar office.
The main task of the committee is to bring all the victims under a common umbrella to compensate through reviewing their claims as a worker of those factories housed in Rana Plaza that collapsed, killing 1,135 workers and injured over 2,500 on April 24, last year.
“The committee with the help of the local administration will scan the workers portfolios to make sure whether they were the workers of the Rana Plaza factories or not,” SM Mannan Kochi, convener of the committee, told the Dhaka Tribune.
He also said: We have made the decision to bring all the victims under a common platform as they are now scattered and wandering for help and the committee will scrutinise the claims of the victims with the help of the local administration.
As per the statistics of several trade unions, there are around 120 workers are unidentified and missing, said Sirajul Islam Rony, president of Bangladesh National Garment Workers Employees League. But the BGMEA leaders claimed that the number could be around in between 40-50.
After cross checking the identity of the victims, they will get compensation from Prime Minister Relief Fund, ILO Trust Fund, benefits for losing jobs as per the section 20 of labour law and, said BGMEA vice president (finance) Reaz Bin Mahmood.
A total of 207 victims out of 322 had been identified through DNA test, of which in the first phase report last November, the lab identified 157 victims– 116 women and 41 men, while the second phase report in February this year identified 43 more victims – 33 women and 10 men and seven in the third phase.
Sources at the national DNA lab said a total of 541 families had provided DNA samples for cross-matching with the 322 unidentified victims, whose bone and teeth were collected as DNA samples.
