Bangladesh: Out of the Rubble Our World

will rival the new Boeing Dreamliner.

Those are the headlines, now it is time for Our World.

This could be a war-zone. But it's all that remains of Rana Plaza, an

eight Storey garment factory. In the space of a few minutes, over

1,000 people were crushed to death. Many more were seriously injured

and one of the world's deadliest industrial disasters. I have come

to back up in Bangladesh to meet the survivors. -- Dhaka. And those

I want to know why, when it was clear the building was dangerous,

The garment industry is transforming the Bangladeshi

economy. It produces three-quarters of the country's wealth and employs

over 3.5 million people, mostly young women. Sixteen-year-old Anna

Akhter is one of them. She had recently started a job in a company

supplying Primark. Wednesday, 24th Like millions of Bangladeshis in

factories similar to this one, she wasted no time firing up the heavy

industrial sewing machines. Workers are set a daily quota to meet the

demands of the most expansive industry in the country. The six

upper floors of Rana Plaza were crammed with hundreds of people,

busy producing clothes for foreign consumers. On the ground floor and

first floors, there was a bank and the shopping mall. At 9am on 24th

April, the electricity stocks. Now that is nothing uncommon. As usual,

the generator kicked in. That's 30-year-old Pakhi Begum had left

for two children at home. She would It then took just minutes for the

eight-storey building to collapse, with thousands of people trapped

Rana Plaza was on a busy main road in central Savar. Thousands of

people saw heard the building were This room and immediately rushed to

the scene to help. Some, like Didar Hossain, would remain there for

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Resembled a war zone and was too much for the emergency services. --

the site resembles. The army was quickly called in. I could see

people, hundreds and thousands, a no fire brigade are nothing, people.

The labourers, the market people those who were in the street. They

all came running in thousands to rescue those who were trying to

escape the debris. The building 4,000 people went into Rana Plaza

on the morning of 24th April. One- quarter of them never made it out

alive. Standing at this building site, you get a sense of the scale

of this tragedy. I am walking on top of people's saris and T-shirts

with blood all over them. And the collapse of Rana Plaza should never

have happened. It was no secret the building was dangerous. Designed to

be six storeys high, the structure could not cope with the two extra

flowers which had been illegally added. Or the heavy industrial

generators. For weeks, workers had been complaining about cracks.

Finally, on 23rd April, less than 24 hours before it would collapse,

the authorities stepped in. They immediately evacuated the building.

First on the scene was a local journalist, Nazmul Huda. He showed

me the remarkable for the she filmed of Rana Plaza up the day

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Laws, the factory owners would lose hundreds of thousands of Dhaka.

Barge and foreign orders would be in jeopardy. They were more afraid

of losing their jobs than damage to the building. The building was

owned by Mohammed Sohel Rana, a man with strong political connections

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The authorities insisted the building was to remain closed until

engineers had done a proper survey. The workers were sent home. The

next day, the factories were open How do you feel when you see this

footage and you have spoken to all these people could do not want to

Less than 24 hours after these women expressed their fears, they

were crushed to death along with Those which survived the collapse

of Rana Plaza were brought to hospitals like this one, when I met

up with victims of the tragedy. -- Another survivor of the collapse

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Deep inside the rubble, she was alive. This would be the start of a

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The military and structural engineers had quickly realise that

the building would collapse even further if heavy lifting equipment

was brought in and specialist tools would take time to arrive. Rescuing

the thousands are still trapped in the ruins would require local

people, local expertise, and local equipment. We used to tools to

carry people. We used small cutting it tools and it small shovels that

the local people had. After one hour, we could understand that it

is difficult to approach this collapsed buildings because it is

like a sandwich or a pancake and you cannot really approach from the

top. You can go from the side. We started to make a lot of, you know,

crawling trenches. Because the gap between each wall and ceiling, each

floor, became less than two feet by that time. It was only because

somebody could crawl and go inside and give a hand it to someone who

was trying to get out and help him or her to come out. In small gaps

and cavities all over the site, people were trapped and unable to

get out. The dead and living were Because of this size, this man was

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able to get into spaces that others He saved her life and they are

still in touch. Using just a hacksaw, he amputated limbs of two

more people who were in tight spaces where medical staff could

not or would not go. The hospitals are still full of people recovering

from their ordeals. For some, the rescue was as dramatic as the

As the rescue effort continued, garment workers around the country

revolted and demanded safe working conditions and better pay.

Meanwhile, the authorities were in pursuit of the owner of the

building. Mahomed was finally arrested, trying to flee across the

border to India. In total, 30 The Rana Plaza disaster shocked the

world and it has led to action. Seven building inspectors have been

sacked for not doing their jobs and engineers are estimating that 60%

of factories are unsafe. I was taken to a factory that was shut

down in response to the collapse. A crack had been discovered and the

authorities were not taking any chances. Here at this bench,

someone was working away and it seems like as soon as it was

announced that his building was unsafe to work in, they left

immediately. You can see some of their unfinished work and some of

the things which were completed. The workers here have no idea when

they can come back to work. It is expected to cost more than $1

billion to make the country's workplaces safer. Some

international firms are like caging them, as are, and prime mark have

agreed to help foot the bill as part of a binding agreement to

improve safety standards. They pledge means that they will be

forced to inspect buildings are regularly. Other companies like

Wal-Mart and Gap have not signed up because of concerns about the

liabilities involved. Say it say that they will carry out their own

safety inspections. -- they say that they will carry out. Despite

these promises, some workers are still worried. I am about to go

into a factory that the unions are very concerned about. They are

concerned about the working conditions and their safety. On top

of that, this yellow sign says that everyone in this building should be

a evacuated because the building has cracks in it and poses a risk

to workers and anyone else entering. We had been told that although the

building had cracks in it, it was not in danger of immediate collapse.

I'm still astonished to find a garment factory in full flow. The

manager seemed unconcerned. Despite the sign saying do not enter the

building, it is risky, used think it is OK for people to come here?

Yes. The building is not a problem. Are you worried about your life

because you were here as well? -- The manager says that he plans on

leaving out within the next six months. One week after the collapse

of the plaza, the search for survivors was abandoned and heavy

moving he was brought into the site to move the rubble. Deep in the

side, won 18-year-old woman was still alive. She was trapped just

above the ground floor and had crawled around in the darkness for

more than a fortnight and found a small supply of food and water

She told me that during her 17-day ordeal underground, she had lost

She was perhaps hours away from adding to the death toll which

Families are being promised over $10,000 for each victim. That has

enough being done to make the garment industry a safer place to

work? The appetite of the West for cheap clothing means that there is

no certainty that the fate of vulnerable garment workers will

change. I am angry that we have had this happen in our country. It is a

wake-up call for everybody. The It is a booming sector with a