Bangladesh: new fire at clothing factory

A fire broke out yesterday evening around 7pm at the knitting section

of Aswad Composite Mills Ltd. garment factory in Gazipur, about 50 km away from Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka. As of the latest news this morning, 10 people have been killed in the blaze and more than 50 suffered injuries.

The death toll could have been higher had the fire broken out during the factory’s main working hours. According to local journals Iqbal Ahmed, the factory was closed for the day but still housed some employees working overtime. Among others, the factory supplied clothing to Canadian retailers Hudson’s Bay Co. (HBC) and Loblaw according to US customs.

Tiffany Bourré, HBC’s senior manager of external communications, confirmed that HBC’s last order was placed with Aswad in October 2012, for delivery in April 2013. “We had determined at that time that we would not be placing subsequent orders with Aswad,” said Bourré in an email. Loblaw on the other hand denies placing orders with Aswad.

“Loblaw Companies is confident we have not placed any product orders from the Aswad Composite Mills Ltd. Co., where the fire took place. And we have a ‘no tolerance’ policy with all our vendors when it comes to unauthorized outsourcing. We have seen documents that suggest there may have been such unauthorized production and we are investigating,” said Julija Hunter, vice-president of public relations at Loblaw.

According to the recently published list of more than 1,500 Bangladeshi garment factories used by the 90 international brands and retailers that signed the Accord on Fire and Building Safety, at least six well known North American and European companies sourced garments from Aswad.

The outbreak of yet another fire in a garment factory in Bangladesh, the world’s second biggest garment exporter after China, proves the urgency to put better safety laws and enforcement measures as well as a system of factory checks and audits into place.

The latest incident in a string of garment factory mishaps comes just six months after the Rana Plaza factory collapse in Dhaka that killed more than 1,100 workers and the fire at Tazreen Fashions that claimed more than 110 workers’ lives. The victims and their families in both cases are still awaiting adequate compensation.