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With bulldozers now clawing away at the mountain of rubble at the site of last Wednesday’s disaster, the number of bodies being recovered from the country’s deadliest industrial disaster has been increasing sharply.
Lieutenant Mir Rabbi, an officer in a special army control room set up to coordinate the rescue operation, told AFP the “death toll now stands at 501”, a sharp rise on the figure of 441 compiled by authorities on Thursday evening.
Dozens more people are thought to have been buried alive after the eight-storey building collapsed on April 24 in Savar, which lies around 30 kilometres (20 miles) to the northwest of Dhaka.
Around 3,000 garment workers were on shift at the time of the disaster in the Rana Plaza compound which housed five different textile factories.
Spain’s Mango, Britain’s low-cost Primark chain and the Italian label Benetton were among the retailers who have confirmed having products made at Rana Plaza where the typical worker took home less than 40 dollars a month.
The collapse was the latest in a series of disasters to befall the $20 billion industry which accounts for 80 percent of the country’s exports.
A fire at another factory compound killed 111 workers last November and witnesses say the April 24 disaster happened after bosses insisted staff remain at their workstations even though cracks had been detected in the building.
Meanwhile, a top investigator probing the Bangladesh garment factory disaster said yesterday that four huge generators placed on the upper floors of the building had caused it to collapse.
“Four huge generators were set up on each of the top floors where garment factories were located, violating rules,” Main Uddin Khandaker, a senior home ministry official heading a government investigation team, told AFP. — AFP.
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