For the third time,
people around the world will commemorate the anniversary of the collapse of
the Rana Plaza building in Savar, close to Dhaka in Bangladesh, that housed
five garment factories on April 24. The incident took the lives of 1,134
workers; more than 2,500 were injured. Tragically, most – if not all – of
the deaths and injuries could have been avoided if the garment workers
been allowed to evacuate early like other workers in the building. But time
pressure, greed and fear prevented common sense.
FashionUnited has put together a timeline of events from that tragic day
in April to the most current developments – initiatives like Fashion
Revolution Day, efforts by the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building
Safety and the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, factory inspection
reports and other efforts by local and international stakeholders. Will
their joints efforts be enough to turn the tragedy around to become a
change maker for the global garment industry? Only time will tell.