Korruption, som underminerer enhver byggeregel, spekulation i billige materialer, voldsom overvægt fra tunge maskiner i skrøbelige bygninger og administrativt kaos truer utallige ansatte i verdens største tøjindustri præget af underbetaling og knokleri fra morgen til aften.
DHAKA, 6 May 2013 (IRIN): Corpses are still being recovered from Bangladesh’s worst industrial disaster ever – a factory building collapse on 24 April that killed at least 650 workers (seneste tal) near the capital. Government experts are scrambling to prevent a repeat.
“This is a wake-up call for us because a lot of construction is going on in Dhaka [the capital] and other cities, so we are definitely trying to find out the solution,” said Abdus Salam, a senior research engineer in the government’s Housing and Building Research Institute (HBRI).
One government explanation for the accident is that shoddy (billigt opført) construction combined with vibrations from inappropriately placed heavy machinery brought down the eight-story building, known as Rana Plaza, filled with hundreds of textile workers.
Not intended for heavy machinery
An early damage assessment (still unpublished) by NGO Asian Disaster Preparedness Centre (ADPC) conducted on the day of the collapse revealed how a building intended for retail merchants (detailhandlende) was being used for industrial purposes.
It housed five garment factories that employed at least 3.000 workers and placed weight on the floors (including four huge electrical generators on the third and fourth floors) almost six times greater than the building was intended to bear.
Support columns (støttepiller) were erected haphazardly. Building materials and methods were below par (af lav standard).
Experts say the building was but one example of a broken system for authorizing (at tillade), carrying out and monitoring construction; tens of thousands more buildings – and millions of people inside them – face the same fate, said Anisur Rahman, an urban planner with ADPC’s office in Bangladesh.
“We are looking at the foundation for a big disaster.”
Lack of clear planning authority
Legislation from the 1950s gave the Ministry of Housing and Public Works authority to regulate town planning, while a 2009 Municipality Act transferred that power to local governments.
Since then each of the capital’s five municipalities (including Savar, the site of the industrial accident 30 km outside Dhaka) has handled its own planning.
“It is a management mess,” admitted K.Z. Hossain Taufique, an urban planner and director of town planning for the government’s Capital Development Authority.
He explained how since the 1980s, as more businesses and people located in cities, responsibility for town planning has been divided between the Housing Ministry and the Ministry of Local Government, creating a patchwork of authorization – and leaving deadly gaps.
Unenforced building codes (regler)
Læs videre på
http://www.irinnews.org/Report/97987/Analysis-Wake-up-call-for-Bangladesh-s-building-industry
Se også telegrammet
http://www.u-landsnyt.dk/nyhed/05-05-13/fn-og-bangladesh-enes-om-f-lles-plan-efter-industr
