With future uncertain and challenges ahead, many of the so-called lucky survivors of the Savar Rana Plaza collapse are passing their days with worries.
The incident has left many of them physically challenged – a situation they have to drag out throughout their life, being at the mercy of others.
A good number of the victims were the only breadwinners for their family, which have started facing real challenges since the tragedy occurred.
The only worry of the survivors is who will stand beside them after a couple of years when government and non-government support will be withdrawn.
At present, they are receiving good treatment and some help from the government and some non-government organisations, but these aids will come to an end one day.
Tension on survival runs high among them overtaking their physical pains.
“My backbone is worthless and I feel tired to talk. I will be a burden for my family. Here, nobody tells me what I will do in the future for earning. It’s a huge pain, brother,” a worker Azmal who is undergoing treatment at National Institute of Trauma and Orthopaedics told this correspondent Monday. He was retrieved from the rubble on the first day of the collapsed building that housed five garment factories and left 1,127 workers dead and many more injured.
“I don’t know who will earn for my family. Only Allah knows what is in store for me,” said an upset Azmal, also father of a three-year-old boy.
Like him, many victims were looking tensed about their rehabilitation. A number of them were saved by amputations while some lost their eyesight and some became partially paralysed.
Prof K H Abdul Awal Rizvi, director of NITOR, said many of the victims admitted to the hospital requested the doctors not to amputate for the sake of the future.
“We were helpless and had no other alternatives but to go for amputation to save their lives,” said the director.
Some had their veins and muscles totally damaged. Those could be afflicted with gangrene. Therefore, they were necessary to be amputated, he added.
A total of 72 workers of Rana Plaza are now under treatment in the hospital. NITOR has formed a 30-member team to look after the victims. The workers have no dissatisfaction over the treatment. They were only tensed about their future.
Rebeka, from Dinajpur, worked on the fifth floor of Rana Plaza.
She was pulled out from the rubble three days after the incident. The rescuers found her right leg badly broken and left hand already almost amputated from the elbow when she was rescued.
Doctors later had to amputate her right leg at the hospital.
A divorcee and mother of two children, Rebeka used to send money from her wages to her family at the village every month. Her mother, a school-going younger brother Rosul, and her two children lived on her income.
She said she was still saving a portion of money she got from kind-hearted people during treatment.
Rebeka was considering Rosul to get engaged in a small business with the money, but she was confused whether underage Rosul would be able to do so.
Meanwhile, five more unidentified bodies of Rana Plaza tragedy have been handed over from Dhaka Medical College and Sir Salimullah Medical College morgues to Anjuman Mofidul Islam, a charitable organisation, for burial after collecting DNA samples Monday.
Executive Magistrate of Dhaka District Administration Md Tarik Hassan handed over the bodies to Sarwar Jahan, deputy director of the charitable organisation, in the afternoon. The bodies were supposed to be buried at Jurain graveyard.
A total of 286 unidentified bodies have been buried in the graveyard so far.
With these five, the number stood at 291.
