Bangladesh - Collapsed Building Owner Arrested on India Border

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Mohammed Sohel Rana, center, the fugitive owner of an illegally-constructed building that collapsed last week in Bangladesh, reacts as he is produced before the media in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Sunday, April 28, 2013. Rana was arrested near the land border in Benapole in western Bangladesh, just as he was about to flee into India's West Bengal state, said Jahangir Kabir Nanak, junior minister for local government.

 

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SAVAR, Bangladesh (AP) -- The fugitive owner of an illegally-constructed building that collapsed in Bangladesh in a deadly heap last week was captured Sunday at a border crossing with India by members of a commando force. Mohammed Sohel Rana was arrested in Benapole in western Bangladesh, just as he was about to flee into India's West Bengal state, said Jahangir Kabir Nanak, junior minister for local government. Rana was brought back by helicopter to the capital Dhaka where he faced charges of negligence.


Rana's capture by the Rapid Action Battalion brought cheers and applause when it was announced on a loudspeaker at the site of the collapsed building in the Dhaka suburb of Savar, where search and rescue operations were continuing through the night. At least 377 people are confirmed to have died in the collapse of the 8-story building on Wednesday. Three of its floors were built illegally. The death toll is expected to rise but it is already the deadliest tragedy to hit Bangladesh's garment industry, which is worth $20 billion annually and is a mainstay of the economy. The collapse and previous disasters in garment factories have focused attention on the poor working conditions of workers who toil for as little as $38 a month to produce clothing for top international brands.


Rana was presented before the media briefly at the commando force's headquarters in Dhaka. Wearing a printed shirt, an exhausted and disheveled Rana was sweating as two security officers held him by his arms. A security official helped him to drink water after he gestured he was thirsty. He did not speak to the media during the 10-minute appearance after which he was taken away. He is likely to be handed over to local police who will have to charge him and produce him in court within 24 hours.

A small-time politician from the ruling party, Rana had been on the run since Wednesday. He last appeared in public in front of his Rana Plaza on Tuesday after huge cracks appeared in the building. However, he assured tenants, including five garment factories, that the building was safe, according to witnesses.

A bank and some shops on the first floor shut their premises on Wednesday after police ordered an evacuation, but managers of the garment factories on the upper floor told workers to continue their shifts. Hours later, Rana Plaza was reduced to rubble, crushing most victims under massive blocks of concrete and mortar. A garment manufacturers' group said the factories in the building employed 3,122 workers, but it was not clear how many were inside it when it collapsed. About 2,500 survivors have been accounted for.

On Sunday, rescuers were supposed to start using heavy equipment to drill a central hole from the top to look for survivors and dead bodies. But the operation was delayed after rescuers located a woman inside the building, and were trying to pull her out. Army Maj. Gen. Chowdhury Hasan Suhrawardy, the coordinator of the rescue operations, said so far rescuers have been manually shifting concrete blocks with the help of light equipment such as pickaxes and shovels. The next phase will involve manual efforts as well as heavy equipment, including hydraulic cranes and cutters to bore a hole from the top of the collapsed building, he told reporters.

The purpose is to "continue the operation to recover both survivors and dead bodies. In this stage, we have no other choice but to use some heavy equipment. We will start it within a few hours. Manual operation and use of small equipment is not enough," he said.

The work will be carried out carefully so as not to mutilate bodies, he said. All the equipment is in place, "from a small blade to everything. We have engaged many private sector companies which supplied us equipment, even some heavy ones. "In rare good news, a female worker was pulled out alive on Sunday. Hasan Akbari, a rescuer,said when he tried to extricate a man next to the woman, "he said his body was being torn apart. So I had to let go. But God willing, we will be able to rescue him with more help very soon."

On Saturday, police arrested three owners of two factories. Also under detention are Rana's wife and two government engineers who were involved in giving approval for the building design. Local television stations reported that the Bangladesh High Court has frozen the bank accounts of the owners of all five garment factories in the collapsed building.

Rana was a local leader of ruling Awami League's youth front. His arrest, and that of the factory owners, was ordered by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who is also the Awami League leader. The disaster is the worst ever for the country's booming and powerful garment industry, surpassing a fire five months ago that killed 112 people and brought widespread pledges to improve worker-safety standards. But since then very little has changed in Bangladesh, where low wages have made it a magnet for numerous global brands.

Bangladesh's garment industry was the third largest in the world in 2011, after China and Italy, having grown rapidly in the past decade. The country's minimum wage is the equivalent of about $38 a month. Among the garment makers in the building were Phantom Apparels, Phantom Tac, Ether Tex, New Wave Style and New Wave Bottoms. Altogether, they produced several million shirts, pants and other garments a year.

The New Wave companies, according to their website, make clothing for several major North American and European retailers. Britain's Primark acknowledged it was using a factory in Rana Plaza, but many other retailers distanced themselves from the disaster, saying they were not involved with the factories at the time of the collapse or had not recently ordered garments from them.

Wal-Mart said none of its clothing had been authorized to be made in the facility, but it is investigating whether there was any unauthorized production.

 

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Hawa ndiyo polisi walioko kazini kisawasawa. Yuke mhindi alimuua yule mpenziwe mwalimu kimara hivi ameshakamatwa au kashalala mbele? Tanzania kama una hela basi utakuwa hata jamaa wanakupa mbinu za kujificha au kutoroka!! Au eti Alex Massawe hajaweza kukamatwa?

 

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Two owners of clothes factories based in the building that collapsed on the outskirts of Dhaka in Bangladesh have been arrested.
Mahbubur Rahman Tapas and Balzul Samad Adnan –the owner and managing director of New Wave Style, the largest of the five factories in the collapsed Rana Plaza building – surrendered overnight to the Bangladesh Garment Manufactures & Exporters

Association and were handed to police.
They are accused of repeatedly ignoring warnings about the safety of the factory complex and forcing their employees to continue working.

Two engineers involved in designing the complex in the non-industrial Savar zone on the outskirts of the capital were also arrested at their homes early on Saturday for ignoring the same warnings after cracks were spotted in the building on Tuesday.
The arrests on Saturday came as the death toll rose to 352. Rescue workers pulled another 29 people to safety on Saturday after locating another 40 deep under rubble. More than 3,000 workers may have been inside the building when it collapsed and police believe as many as 900 are still missing.

Sohel Rana, the owner of the eight-storey building – which officials said had been built illegally – is still on the run. Police said several of his relatives had been detained to pressure him to hand himself in. An alert has also gone out to airport and border authorities to prevent him from fleeing the country.

The Rana Plaza complex housed factories that made clothes for western companies, including the British high street retail chains Primark and Matalan.

In London on Saturday, protesters demonstrated outside Primark's store in Oxford Street to demand compensation for the victims of the Dhaka building collapse.

Speaking outside Primark's Oxford Street store in central London, Murray Worthy, from the campaign group War on Want, said: "We're here to send a clear message to Primark that the 300 deaths in the Bangladesh building collapse were not an accident – they were entirely preventable deaths.

"If Primark had taken its responsibility to those workers seriously, no one need have died this week."
Shamshul Huq, junior internal affairs minister, said: "Everyone involved – including the designer, engineer, and builders – will be arrested for putting up this defective building."

Sohel Rana is a local politician connected to the ruling Awami League and reportedly used retainers to intimidate workers who refused to enter the ill-fated building on Wednesday morning.

An alliance of leftwing parties, which is part of the ruling coalition, said it would call a national strike on 2 May if all those responsible for the disaster were not arrested by Sunday.

Wednesday's collapse was the third major industrial incident in five months in Bangladesh, the second-largest exporter of garments in the world. In November, a fire at the Tazreen Fashion factory nearby the latest disaster killed 112 people.
Anger over the working conditions of Bangladesh's 3.6 million garment workers – most of whom are women – has grown since the disaster, triggering protests. Garments account for 78% of Bangladesh's exports.

Hundreds of people were on the streets again on Saturday, smashing and burning cars and sparking more battles with police, who responded with tear gas and rubber bullets. Eyewitnesses said dozens of people were injured in the latest clashes.
Marina Begum, 22, spoke from a hospital bed of her ordeal inside the broken building for three days.
"It felt like I was in hell," she told reporters. "It was so hot, I could hardly breathe, there was no food and water. When I regained my senses I found myself in this hospital bed."

Emdadul Islam, chief engineer of the state-run Capital Development Authority (CDA), said the owner of the building had not received the proper building consent, obtaining a permit for a five-storey building from the local municipality, which did not have the authority to grant it. Another three storeys had been added illegally to the complex, he said.

 

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[h=1]Dhaka building collapse: Woman pulled alive from rubble
[/h]A woman has been pulled alive from the ruins of a building that collapsed in a suburb of Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka, 17 days ago.

 

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[h=1]Dhaka building collapse: Woman pulled alive from rubble[/h]A woman has been pulled alive from the ruins of a building that collapsed in a suburb of Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka, 17 days ago.

The head of the fire service earlier said the woman, named Reshma, had been found in the remains of the second floor of the eight-storey Rana Plaza.
She had no serious injuries and had been talking with rescuers, he added.
The dramatic news came after the army said more than 1,000 people were now known to have died in the disaster.
The death toll is expected to keep climbing, as work crews using heavy machinery have begun removing rubble from the worst-damaged areas.
On Friday afternoon, army officers ordered workers to stop clearing the site when the woman's cries were heard. Within minutes, hundreds of rescuers gathered close to where she was found.
Not long afterwards, rescuers pulled her from the rubble. She has been taken to a military hospital.

 

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zaidi
DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) - A woman buried in the wreckage of a collapsed garment factory building for 17 days was rescued Friday, a miraculous moment set against a scene of unimaginable horror where the death toll is more than 1,000 and still rising.

The woman survived in a Muslim prayer room in the the eight-story Rana Plaza building, where crews have been focused on recovering bodies, not rescuing survivors, for days. Trapped in wreckage finally exposed by heavy equipment, she waved a pipe to attract attention.