Assessing structural safety of RMG buildings, for hiding or revealing?

by Dr Shayer Ghafur

Published in

Sunday, May 19, 2013

GROSS loss of human lives in the Rana Plaza disaster has drawn worldwide reactions, which the state and the readymade garments sector should take seriously. The pope has compared RMG workers as slaves during liberating and empowering modernity; consumers in the streets of western cities, on the other hand, are calling for boycott of blood garments from Bangladesh. These reactions are expressed for violation of the garments workers right to safe and healthy working environment. The consumers call for boycotting blood garments can be as trendy as boycotting blood diamond. Showing ones conscience will spread more rapidly over a $10 T-shirt than a $2,000 diamond wedding ring. Consumer reactions are likely to affect the national economy as the RMG sector has been the main foreign exchange earner during the past decades. Outpouring of national grief and anger, unfortunately, is inadequate in encountering the looming threat of market shrinkage. The world has rung a bell in ethical and moral tune, which Bangladesh should listen to, to respond adequately and timely. The situation is: either purify or petrify. The Rana Plaza collapse exposes gross anomalies at different levels insofar as ensuring workers right to safe working conditions is concerned, e.g. design approval; construction and postconstruction conversion of use; and, coercive labour management. Workers access either to safe and healthy working environment or minimum wage has been long due. Corrective steps by the state, its regulatory apparatus, alongside garment entrepreneurs, are an immediate necessity in removing workers life-threatening vulnerability which would, among others, put a human face to the RMG sector, and restore consumers confidence abroad. The RMG sector can hardly afford complacency by inactivity and indifference. That would be arrogance by their perceived immunity. The resiliency of this sector that has helped its surviving and thriving the post-multi-fibre agreement and recession periods is unlikely to help overcome the present crisis. The crisis is now on the home front and Bangladeshs global competitors are more than willing to poach its share of the market in their favour. High-ranking ILO officials have recently met the government, and employers and workers of the RMG sector in Bangladesh to convey its concern. The ILO and its tripartite partners agreed to implement a number of short- and medium-term steps. Issues requiring urgent action include labour law reforms, structural and fire safety of all active RMG factories, regulatory capacity by increasing the number of factory inspectors. We welcome the timely ILO intervention in Bangladesh as part of its mission of protecting the rights of the workers. Thankfully, the government has decided to reform the existing labour law. Perhaps, the governments decision to implement its election commitment coincided with the ILO visit. This belated awakening should

not go in vain, with the employers resorting to urban informality by bending rules with impunity for capital accumulation by dispossession. I am encouraged by the ILO country directors recent dialogue with the representatives of the architecture and civil engineering departments at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology. ILO involvement with the tripartite partners is qualitatively different than the employers alliance with Rajuk and the Department of Civil Engineering at BUET. The difference is due to the latters narrowing down the holistic concern of labour wellbeing to structural safety of buildings. Lately, RMG Employers are rushing to BUET in hundreds for structural evaluation of their factory buildings. This appropriation of BUET misses the holistic perspective of a safe and healthy environment in their purchasing a safe certificate from BUET. Structurally safe certificate hides more than it reveals. Knowledge and integrity of BUET are hardly exhausted in pursuing such a short-sighted goal. BUET has more to offer to the nation. We propose to consider the structural safety component alongside fire safety and social compliance components with a gender perspective. After all whats the point of having a structurally safe building standing over a foundation of deceit in violation of the workers right to safe and healthy working environment. In purview of the ILO and tripartite partners position, it is high time to take our scrutiny from buildings per se to the city level. As Dhaka is now a site of production we need to assess how a building is situated at a given locality. Does it tap on or drain existing infrastructure or make the locality vulnerable? Risk factor of neighbourhoods has to be taken into account because the charred bodies of Nabab Katra in 2010 are still vivid in our memory. Giving an urban dimension to the garment factory buildings would guide relocating existing unfit buildings on the ground of public safety. Assessment of existing garment factory building, therefore, has to include Context, Function and Comfort dimensions. We propose this comprehensive evaluation framework for getting productive output from the involved time and resources in accessing and processing onsite observation and documents. A comprehensive design evaluation considers the following: carrying capacity of available infrastructure (context), adequate allocation and usability of functional spaces (function), and optimum consideration of comfortable working environment in terms of light, ventilation, temperature and noise (comfort). Objective criteria and their indicators in each component are set for evaluation by onsite observation, user response, and computer simulation. We have developed this framework at the Department of Architecture, as housing quality indicators, and made a dry-run at different private housing projects in Dhaka. HQI or its equivalents are in practice in the UK, France Portugal, and Korea to protect the consumer rights by facilitating their choice. With due polishing the generic parameters considered in housing can be applied in evaluating existing garment factory buildings. The tangible outcome of this evaluation by scoring would put a garment building within a 4 scale band from poor to excellent. Published in the web, these evaluations will be useful in abroad as well as home. The moot point is transparency: people have a right to know the conditions of garments buildings they work or live beside as they affect their safety and health. A garment factory buildings position, however, can be progressive through improvements made by retrofittings. All have been said on the ground of ensuring the RMG workers wellbeing in their work place. Restoring the RMG sectors tarnished image is our complementary objective. The message of

putting an end to the business as usual that the RMG employers can give to the world and the nation, for gaining their confidence, is not by evaluating the factory buildings alone. The employers can attest their commitments to ethical practice by demolishing first the BGMEA building at Hatirjheel. Dr Shayer Ghafur is professor at the Department of Architecture, BUET.