Rana Plaza Disaster Case Study

Running head: RANA PLAZA DISASTER CASE STUDY
RANA PLAZA DISASTER CASE STUDY
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

1RANA PLAZA DISASTER CASE STUDY
Question 1:
In the year 2013, a garment factory in Dhaka named Rana Plaza collapsed which was
stated as a structural failure. This structural failure caused an eight- story building to collapse and
took lives of around 1,134 people. Around 2,500 people were injured in the incident but they
were able to get out from the building alive. This incident was considered to be one of the
deadliest accidents that occurred due to structural failure in the history of modern human (A
summary of Primark’s Rana Plaza response, 2015). The causes that led to such a disaster was
directly because of building problems; after proper enquiry it was found that the building of
Rana Plaza was built on a filled- in pond that compromised the integrity of the structure. One of
the other causes was that the building was converted from commercial utilization to industrial
utilization. There were also three floors that were additionally built and it did not abide by the
instructions provided in the original permit (Sinkovics, Hoque and Sinkovics 2016). The building
also used substandard construction material that resulted in overloading of the structure of
building and it was further aggravated by the vibrations created from generators.
The consequences of the disaster were immediately seen after the occurrence of the
incident. With death of around one thousand people, the Capital Development Authority filed a
case against the five garment factories which operated inside the building and the owner of the
building as well. All the five owners of the garment factories inside Rana Plaza were ordered to
be arrested and one among them fled (Barua and Ansary 2017). This incident also highlighted
the poor labor conditions that the Bangladeshi workers faced especially in the sector of ready-
made garments. It was revealed that all the workers in Bangladesh are exposed to unsafe work

2RANA PLAZA DISASTER CASE STUDY
environment and high- risk accidents in workplace, deaths and occurrence of occupational
diseases is a frequent thing (The Rana Plaza Accident and its aftermath, 2020).
Question 2:
There were various stakeholders involved with Rana Plaza building and were responsible
for its collapse. First stakeholder who was primarily involved and is responsible for the
occurrence of such a disaster is the Bangladesh government; they failed to protect the citizens of
Bangladesh from such a tragedy and all the tragedies that occurred after or before the disaster of
Rana Plaza (Chowdhury 2017). It was found that the building was already marked and declared
unsafe by one of the engineers; however, an official of the local government declared the
building safe stating that it was pending some other inspection. As a result, the government was
unable to implement a comprehensive and a coordinated control of this factory; moreover, none
of the organizations took the responsibility of investigating whether the factory building had
adequate resources. It is also unfortunate that the government had purposefully suppressed all the
efforts that were undertaken by the labor unions in order to reveal the poor safety conditions in
all the garment factories situated in Bangladesh.
Other important stakeholders who were responsible for the cause of the incident included
the five garment factory owners who had their shops operating in the building and forced their
workers to go and work in that unsafe work environment even after it was declared that the
building was unsafe (Boudreau, Makioka and Tanaka 2015). They also continued all kinds of
dubious business practices within the building. The managers are also hugely responsible for
allowing the workers and forcing them to complete the work within the deadline. The buyers are
also partially responsible for the incident because if not for their high demand for fast fashion