Bangladesh building collapse toll shoots past 400, EU mulls action

Zee Media Bureau

Dhaka: A week after an eight-storey building collapsed in Dhaka, the death toll has shot up to over 400, said reports on Wednesday. The commercial building Rana Plaza in Savar district of Dhaka that caved in last Wednesday, housed five garment factories. Bangladesh is notorious for its illegal constructions and frequent building collapses and factory fires. Keeping in view the miserable condition for employees in the South Asian country, the European Union is mulling to take appropriate action to improve the situation, said a BBC report. The report adds that the EU may take actions that could include “the use of its trade preference system, which give Bangladesh duty- and quota-free access to EU markets”. "The EU is presently considering appropriate action, including through the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP)... in order to incentivise responsible management of supply chains involving developing countries," said a EU statement. The owner of the building Mohammed Sohel Rana has been held and a Bangladehi court has ordered to confiscate the property of all the owners of the five factories that were housed by the building. The owners are accused of forcing the employees to continue coming to the factories even after cracks were detected a day earlier. So far over 2800 people have been rescued in what is a large scale search and rescue operation. The rescuers used sensors and small cameras to detect bodies inside the huge rubble or in between sandwiched floors. Sniffer dogs were also available in case they would be of any use in smelling the bodies hiding beneath the debris.