The compensation for the victims of Rana Plaza and their family members from the Global Trust Fund (GTF) will be disbursed today, on the eve of the first anniversary of the catastrophic disaster.
The fund authority will begin the disbursement at the conference room of the labour and employment ministry by handing over compensations to only two persons as a token distribution. Rest of the victims will receive their due compensation through their mobile accounts, Labour Ministry Joint Secretary Khandoker Mostan Hossain confirmed the Dhaka Tribune yesterday.
He further added that the authority had already completed all arrangements for opening mobile accounts for all victims and their families.
“A programme will be arranged at 3pm on Tuesday [today] at the ministry to distribute the compensation. The state minister will hand over the money from the global trust fund to two of the victims,” he added.
Mostan said a total of 3,080 victims and their family members will be compensated, each receiving Tk50,000 from the trust fund created by international retailers.
Earlier, ILO Country Director Srinivasa Reddy, the key stakeholder for managing the fund, had assured that the compensation for Rana Plaza victims would be handed over shortly.
According to the ministry, the some 580 victims who have already received compensation from the British retailer Primark have been excluded from the lists.
The Primark gave $1,000,000 for compensating the victims of the tragedy. Of the amount, $900,000 was disbursed among the employees and workers of Neway Bottom, one of the factories housed in the collapsed Rana Plaza. The rest was transferred to the fund for common compensation.
Currently, the trust fund has only $1.7 crore, while it needs around $4 crores to complete the compensation process.
The compensation figure was summed as per the International Labour Organisation’s Convention 121, used as a guideline to pay off victims of industrial accidents across the globe.
Meanwhile, IndustriALL, a global union federation; UNI, a global trade union; and Clean Clothes Campaign, a leading rights network for the garment sector, recently demanded that the 29 brands which sourced from factories housed at Rana Plaza must pay towards the trust fund before April 24.
Currently, 15 retailers including Benetton, Matalan, Adler Modemarkte and Auchan have failed to even make an initial contribution to the trust fund, UNI Global Union General Secretary Phillip Jennings said.
