Closing in on the ninth anniversary of the Rana Plaza tragedy, over half the victims who survived with injuries report their physical condition as “worsening”, quadrupling from just 14% who reported the same one year ago.
Among the 56.5% who reported their physical condition as worsening in the latest survey, waist pain, headache, pain in the hand, leg, and back pain were some of the major problems.
According to ActionAid Bangladesh, which has been conducting the surveys periodically from previous surveys showed that the physical health status of the survivors was slowly improving over the years -- but Covid-19 has reversed that progress.
A third of the survivors, or 33%, are more or less stable, and 10.5% are completely stable.
In terms of psychosocial health, 48.5% are still in trauma in comparison to 12.5% of survivors last year.
Currently, 31% reported that they are more or less stable, and 20.5% have recovered fully compared to 25.5% last year.
The findings were revealed in a survey conducted among 200 survivors ahead of the 9th anniversary of Rana Plaza tragedy.
The current unemployment rate of the survivors is 53% while 47% of survivors are engaged in various types of wage and self-employment.
Among them, 67% of survivors are unemployed due to their physical condition and 10% have mental trauma.
Survivors tend to change work frequently as their physical conditions do not allow them to work for long periods at a time.
According to the survey, 14.5% of survivors have returned to garments with another 8% being involved in tailoring while many of the survivors shifted to other professions like domestic work, day labour, farming, agriculture, sales, and driving.
The survey found that the income of most of the employed survivors has drastically decreased due to the impacts of the pandemic.
A large proportion, 63.5% of survivors said they had difficulty buying food for their family every day during the pandemic because they did not have the money.
Over half, or 51.5% said they could not pay their rent, and 22.5% said they could not afford childcare.
Nearly half, at 46.5% of survivors had to take out a loan to manage their family's food and other expenses during the pandemic.
A total of 36% said their household income is less than Tk5,000 while 34% have a household income between Tk10,000 and Tk15,000.
Some 35% of survivors reported that their monthly expenditure is over Tk10,000, and 30% have above Tk15,000 with major costs incurred for food, followed by house rent, children’s education, and treatment.
