Bangladesh arrests fire factory managers
BANGLADESH: Thousands of workers protested for a third day Wednesday
after Bangladesh's worst garment factory fire as police arrested three
managers over claims they stopped employees from leaving the burning
plant.
At least 5,000 workers left their factories and joined the protests,
pelting plants with stones and streaming through the main streets of
Ashulia industrial area, just outside Dhaka and home to 500
manufacturing outlets, police said.
“They were demanding justice for the fire victims and arrest of the
Tazreen owner,” Faruq Ahmed, a senior Dhaka police official, told AFP.
Ahmed was referring to the garment factory in Ashulia where a weekend
blaze left at least 110 people dead and more than 100 injured.
Police fired hot water from a water cannon to disperse the crowd
while more than 100 factories declared an impromptu holiday for the day,
fearing the protests would spread into larger-scale industrial unrest.
Police have arrested three managers of the factory hit by the weekend
fire, following charges that they stopped workers from leaving the plant
by insisting that an alarm was just a routine fire drill.
Dhaka police chief Habibur Rahman told AFP the managers allegedly
told panicked workers they had nothing to worry about when the fire
started on Saturday night.
“All three are mid-level managers of Tazreen. Survivors told us they
did not allow the workers to escape the fire, saying it was a routine
fire drill.
There are also allegations they even padlocked doors,” Rahman said.
The latest protests on Wednesday were sparked by a “rumour over a
fire alarm”, Dhaka police official Ahmed said. Survivors of the weekend
blaze told AFP how workers, most of them women, tried to escape the
burning factory, which supplied clothes to a variety of international
brands including US giant Walmart.
Two government inquiries have already been set up to try to establish
the cause of the worst factory blaze to hit Bangladesh's garment
industry, which employs three million and is the mainstay of the
economy.
The shocked nation observed a day of national mourning Tuesday.
AFP
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