10 Years After Bangladesh’s Rana Plaza Disaster, Advocates Say There’s Still Work to Be Done

FILE - In this Friday, June 14, 2013 file photo, Bangladeshi Maksuda holds a picture of her son Mehedi who was a garment worker and is missing following the collapse of the Rana Plaza building as she poses next to the rubble in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh. A delegation of the U.S. Trade Representative’s office is on a five-day visit to Bangladesh ending Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2015, to see the improvement of safety standards at factory sites and changes to legal documents allowing for wider workers’ rights, key conditions for regaining the Generalized System of Preferences facility under which the United States allows imports of more than 5,000 goods from 122 of the world’s poorest countries with low or zero-tariff benefits. The trade benefit was withdrawn after the collapse of Rana Plaza, a building complex housing five garment factories outside the capital, Dhaka in 2013. The garment industry is crucial to Bangladesh’s economy as it employs about 4 million workers, mostly rural women, and many other sectors including banks are heavily dependent on it. AP Photo/Kevin Frayer, File

Ten years after the worst industrial accident in the garment industry’s history, labor leaders say much has been done to improve conditions. But much more remains to be done.

“We are not dying [by the] hundreds like 2013,” said Kalpona Akter, an activist and labor organizer from Bangladesh. “We still have a long way to go.”