9 August, 2013The two compensation meetings for the victims and their families of the tragedies of Tazreen and Rana Plaza in Bagladesh planned to be held on August 11 and 12, have been postponed until September.
The meetings aim to put together a full and fair compensation package for all the victims and their families, and were to take place in Dhaka in August. After rescheduling the meetings will now be held in Geneva in September. The exact date has yet to be decided.
“With the sudden illness of a key union official and a strike threat in Bangladesh, we feel that the meetings will be more fruitful at a later date,” says IndustriALL General Secretary Jyrki Raina. “All major brands and signatories are invited and we are expecting a high level of attendance.”
Responsibility is shared between the brands and retailers sourcing from Tazreen and Rana Plaza, the factory owners, the BGMEA employers association, and the Bangladeshi government. The aim is to employ the industry’s best practice compensation mechanism that was developed after the Spectrum factory collapse in Bangladesh in 2005. That formula is in line with ILO Convention 121 on employment injury benefits.
The formula sets out clear guidelines for payment to families of dead and injured workers and takes into account loss of earnings, pain and suffering, and also medical costs, funeral costs and other important family expenses. The estimated long-term compensation for Rana Plaza will be more than 54 million euros (71 million USD). For Tazreen this is 4.3 million euros (5.7 million USD).
Jyrki Raina concludes:
“It is a clear priority for IndustriALL that international standards are respected on this important issue of compensation in the case of Rana Plaza and Tazreen. What we all want is to make the mechanisms agreed in the Bangladesh Accord quickly a reality so that compensating dead and injured garment workers in Bangladesh becomes a thing of the past.”