One hundred and fifty-seven of the 322 unnamed workers killed in Rana Plaza collapse on April 24 have been identified from DNA sampling.
The National Forensic DNA Profiling Laboratory at Dhaka Medical College Hospital submitted the test reports to the labour ministry on Sunday after more than six months of the worst incident which took more than 1,100 lives, mostly apparel workers.
A labour ministry official told New Age that they received the report.
The official, however, decline to disclose detail.
DNA Profiling Laboratory chief Sharif Aktheruzzaman said that they would re-analyse the rest 165 samples those did not match the samples of the people claimed to be their relations.
He expected that a small change could be appeared in the result through the re-analysis and the process would take three more weeks.
‘After completing the re-analysis, a supplementary report will be submitted to the labour ministry, if necessary,’ the lab chief said.
Sharif said that the laboratory had collected samples from 322 bodies and 548 reference samples from relatives of the workers who went missing after the eight-storey building at Savar collapsed.
Earlier, the lab chief had said that in the first phase they had collected samples from 318 bodies from the mortuary of Dhaka Medical College Hospital and Mitford Hospital.
After collecting the samples from 318 bodies, 27 bodies had been identified and handed over to their relatives by the district administration and the rest 291
had been buried unnamed at Jurain graveyard, he said.
The government had decided to conduct DNA profiling for 10 more bodies which were identified wrongly and were buried in different areas in the country.
‘Lastly we have worked on samples collected from 322 bodies and 548 reference samples from relatives of 540 families and could identify 157 victims,’ Sharif said.
The labour ministry official said that they would send the report to the prime minister’s office for taking next steps.
Labour rights groups, however, demanded for immediate identification of the rest of 165 workers who were not identified through the DNA tests.
National Garment Workers Federation president Amirul Haque Amin told New Age that this was the duty of the government to establish the identities of unnamed bodies killed in the incident.
‘The government should ensure the identities of unnamed bodies as per the list of missing workers as it is true that more than 300 bodies buried unidentified,’ he said.
Combined Garments Workers Federation President Nazma Akte said, ‘We do not want to see any farce after six months of the building collapse and we want to know the clear identity of all deceased workers.’
She demanded establishment of identities of each and every unnamed worker through further DNA tests on by any other possible process.
-With New Age input
