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Assessing structural safety of RMG buildings, for hiding or revealing?

by Dr Shayer Ghafur

Published in Sunday, May 19, 2013

GROSS loss of human lives in the Rana Plaza disaster has drawn worldwide reactions, which thestate and the readymade garments sector should take seriously. The pope has compared RMGworkers as slaves during liberating and empowering modernity; consumers in the streets of westerncities, on the other hand, are calling for boycott of blood garments from Bangladesh. Thesereactions are e xpressed for violation of the garments workers right to safe and healthy workingenvironment. The consumers call for boycotting blood garments can be as trendy as boycottingblood diamond. Showing ones conscience will spread more rapidly over a $10 T -shirt than a$2,000 diamond wedding ring. Consumer reactions are likely to affect the national economy as theRMG sector has been the main foreign exchange earner during the past decades. Outpouring of national grief and anger, unfortunately, is inadequate in encountering the looming threat of marketshrinkage. The world has rung a bell in ethical and moral tune, which Bangladesh should listen to,to respond adequately and timely. The situation is: either purify or petrify.

The Rana Plaza collapse exposes gross anomalies at different levels insofar as ensuring workersright to safe working conditions is concerned, e.g. design approval; construction and post-construction conversion of use; and, coercive labour management. Workers access either to safeand healthy working environment or minimum wage has been long due. Corrective steps by thestate, its regulatory apparatus, alongside garment entrepreneurs, are an immediate necessity inremoving workers life -threatening vulnerability which would, among others, put a human face tothe RMG sector, and restore consumers confidence abroad. The RMG sector can hardly affordcomplacency by inactivity and indifference. That would be arrogance by their perceived immunity.The resiliency of this sector that has helped its surviving and thriving the post-multi-fibreagreement and recession periods is unlikely to help overcome the present crisis. The crisis is nowon the home front and Bangladeshs global competitors are more than willing to poach its share of the market in their favour.

High-ranking ILO officials have recently met the government, and employers and workers of theRMG sector in Bangladesh to convey its concern. The ILO and its tripartite partners agreed toimplement a number of short- and medium-term steps. Issues requiring urgent action includelabour law reforms, structural and fire safety of all active RMG factories, regulatory capacity byincreasing the number of factory inspectors. We welcome the timely ILO intervention inBangladesh as part of its mission of protecting the rights of the workers. Thankfully, thegovernment has decided to reform the existing labour law. Perhaps, the governments decision toimplement its election commitment coincided with the ILO visit. This belated awakening should

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not go in vain, with the employers resorting to urban informality by bending rules with impunityfor capital accumulation by dispossession.

I am encouraged by the ILO country directors recent dialogue with the representatives of thearchitecture and civil engineering departments at Bangladesh University of Engineering and

Technology. ILO involvement with the tripartite partners is qualitatively different than theemployers alliance with Rajuk and the Department of Civil Engineering at BUET. The diff erenceis due to the latters narrowing down the holistic concern of labour wellbeing to structural safetyof buildings. Lately, RMG Employers are rushing to BUET in hundreds for structural evaluationof their factory buildings. This appropriation of BUET misses the holistic perspective of a safe andhealthy environment in their purchasing a safe certificate from BUET. Structurally safe certificatehides more than it reveals. Knowledge and integrity of BUET are hardly exhausted in pursuingsuch a short-sighted goal. BUET has more to offer to the nation. We propose to consider thestructural safety component alongside fire safety and social compliance components with a gender

perspective. After all whats the point of having a structurally safe building sta nding over afoundation of deceit in violation of the workers right to safe and healthy working environment.

In purview of the ILO and tripartite partners position, it is high time to take our scrutiny from buildings per se to the city level. As Dhaka is now a site of production we need to assess how a building is situated at a given locality. Does it tap on or drain existing infrastructure or make thelocality vulnerable? Risk factor of neighbourhoods has to be taken into account because the charred

bodies of Nabab Katra in 2010 are still vivid in our memory. Giving an urban dimension to thegarment factory buildings would guide relocating existing unfit buildings on the ground of publicsafety. Assessment of existing garment factory building, therefore, has to include Context,Function and Comfort dimensions. We propose this comprehensive evaluation framework for getting productive output from the involved time and resources in accessing and processing onsiteobservation and documents. A comprehensive design evaluation considers the following: carryingcapacity of available infrastructure (context), adequate allocation and usability of functional spaces(function), and optimum consideration of comfortable working environment in terms of light,ventilation, temperature and noise (comfort). Objective criteria and their indicators in eachcomponent are set for evaluation by onsite observation, user response, and computer simulation.We have developed this framework at the Department of Architecture, as housi ng qualityindicators, and made a dry -run at different private housing projects in Dhaka. HQI or itsequivalents are in practice in the UK, France Portugal, and Korea to protect the consumer rights

by facilitating their choice. With due polishing the generic parameters considered in housing can be applied in evaluating existing garment factory buildings.

The tangible outcome of this evaluation by scoring would put a garment building within a 4 scale band from poor to excellent. Published in the web, t hese evaluations will be useful in abroadas well as home. The moot point is transparency: people have a right to know the conditions of garments buildings they work or live beside as they affect their safety and health. A garmentfactory buildings positi on, however, can be progressive through improvements made by retro-fittings.

All have been said on the ground of ensuring the RMG workers wellbeing in their work place.Restoring the RMG sectors tarnished image is our complementary objective. The messag e of

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putting an end to the business as usual that the RMG employers can give to the world and thenation, for gaining their confidence, is not by evaluating the factory buildings alone. Theemployers can attest their commitments to ethical practice by demolishing first the BGMEA

building at Hatirjheel.

Dr Shayer Ghafur is professor at the Department of Architecture, BUET.