Tazreen Fire
Govt asked to pay compensations to identified deceased families in 15 days
The High Court on Sunday directed the government authorities to pay compensations in 15 days to 18 out of 25 Tazreen fire victims whose list had been supplied to the court as an addition to the total dead figure of 111 workers following government’s investigation.
The bench of Justice Quazi Reza-Ul Hoque and Justice ABM Altaf Hossain issued the directive after the home ministry in its recent report said that it could ‘trace the 18 persons from the list’.
The bench also directed the authorities to pay compensations for the remaining seven the moment they would be identified.
Regarding compensations to the families of 18, the court asked the authorities to follow the way they had paid Tk 7 lakh to each of the families of the 41 deceased who had been identified through DNA sampling.
The bench asked three anthropologists, who had earlier petitioned seeking a directive to prosecute Tazreen Fashions owner Delwar Hossain, and their counsel Md Asaduzzaman to provide the court with the ILO’s method being applied to compensate labours around the world.
The court observed that Bangladesh laws are not sufficient for proper compensations of labour victims.
The court set January 5 for the next hearing of the writ petition— filed by anthropologists Naznin Akhter Banu, Saydia Gulrukh Kamal and Mahmudul Hasan Sumon— involving compensations to the injured and the families of deceased workers in the deadly factory fire, and prosecution of Delwar Hossain as per the recommendations of investigation report launched by the government in this regard.
The home ministry report, referring to the government’s investigation report that said 111 workers had died in the fire, also said that bodies of 100 workers had been identified and the rest 11 remained unidentified.
Of the 100 victims who have been identified, Dhaka deputy commissioner’s office identified 58, and the rest 42 through DNA sampling of the victims and members of their families, the ministry report said.
-With New Age input
