56.5% of Rana Plaza survivors still face worsening health

More than 50 per cent of garment workers who survived Rana Plaza collapse, the deadliest garment factory accident in history that claimed over a thousand lives, have been experiencing significant deterioration of their health conditions.

Last year, only 14 per cent of Rana Plaza survivors were facing numerus health issues which jumped into 56.5 per cent in 2022, according to a survey of ActionAid Bangladesh.

At least 1,136 people were killed and over 2,500 were injured when Rana Plaza collapsed on April 24, 2013. Still in the present day, most of the workers are suffering from different problems including waist pain, headache, pain in hand and leg, and back pain.

The survey was operated by the ActionAid Bangladesh among 200 survivors ahead of the 9th year of Rana Plaza tragedy.

The trend of previous surveys displayed that the physical health status of the survivors was slowly improving but the emergence of Covid-19 pandemic pushed their suffering towards worse conditions.

Among the survivors, only 33 per cent are more or less stable and 10.5 per cent are completely stable in present time, the survey revealed.

In terms of psychosocial health, 48.5 per cent workers still experience trauma while last year this ratio was only 12.5 per cent. Currently, 31 per cent reported that they have managed to overcome the trauma more or less stable while 20.5 per cent have recovered fully. The trauma recovery rate was 25.5 per cent last year.

Besides, 53 per cent of workers are still unemployed while only 47 per cent of survivors are engaged in various types of work and self-employments. Among the unemployed survivors, 67 per cent are suffering from poor physical condition while 10 per cent have mental trauma.

The survivors tend to change work frequently as their physical conditions fail to allow them to work for long-period at a time.

According to the survey, 14.5 per cent survivors have returned to garments with another 8 per cent involved in tailoring while rest of the survivors shifted to other professions like domestic work, day-labour, farming and agriculture, sales and driving.