Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2013-01-16-Speech-3-506-000"
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"en.20130116.40.3-506-000"2
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"Mr President, firstly I would like to express my sincere condolences to the families of the 112 workers who needlessly lost their lives at the Tazreen Fashions Ltd factory in November of last year and to the families of all of the estimated 700 other garment workers who have lost their lives in industrial fires in Bangladesh since 2006.
I have seen the statement of commitment from the Bangladeshi tripartite on fire safety, but it is not enough. There is already legislation dating from 1981 and 2006 to protect the rights and welfare of workers which has been blatantly and repeatedly ignored.
Bangladesh is the world’s second-largest clothing exporter. Its clothing trade was worth USD 19 billion in 2011 alone, with its factories producing for major brands like Tommy Hilfiger, Gap, Calvin Klein, H&M and Walmart. Yet the workers, 85% of whom are women, face a minimum wage of USD 37 a month and are often forcibly prevented from forming trade unions. The Bangladeshi Government regularly breaks up their protests – sometimes in an armed fashion – and there is a hand-in-glove relationship between the Bangladeshi political elite and the textile owners. One in ten MPs owns a textile factory either themselves or their family owns one.
I support the demands of the families for compensation. An independent public investigation should be launched, and the owners of these death-trap factories must be held responsible for their actions. But does this case not also raise the issue of the failure of European big business and their moral but toothless codes of conduct and CSO statements?
Away from the fires briefly, other practices carried out in the clothing industry in Bangladesh carry further substantial risks to workers’ health. In particular I want to draw attention to the practice of sandblasting of jeans, which happens more in Bangladesh than anywhere else in the world: up to 100 million pairs of sandblasted jeans a year are exported from Bangladesh. This is a deadly process, with workers inhaling silica particles which can lead to the contraction of silicosis and lung cancer. I call on the Bangladeshi Government to ban all forms of sandblasting and for the EU to introduce an import ban."@en1
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