A dangerous livelihood

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The men and women wrap up old tubes, cloth, thick polythene sheets and whatever they have around their legs every day before entering workplace because they know a moment’s carelessness might make them disabled forever.

They know very well their ‘precautionary’ measures would come to little help if a splash of melting metal falls on their feet, but these are everything they could manage.

One of them, Suruj Mia, risks severe burns every day when he along with fellow workers goes near the furnace of the factory.

Pointing to his feet in frustration, he says, “This is all we can do to save our legs from the melting iron. Anytime melting iron may drop on our feet.”

Many people had died earlier in blasts of boilers, he said. “It comes out in the newspapers only when we die. But the number of wounded workers in accidents is much higher than what you know,” he adds.

As the alarm announces lunchbreak, Suruj and his colleagues come out of the factory. They all make the same complaint — the factory owners care too little to provide them with safety tools, even gloves and gumboots.

Like Suruj Mia, thousands of workers across the country have to be in unsafe working condition at re-rolling and rice mills where the owners install unfit furnace chimneys and boilers.

But the successive governments seem reluctant to take any necessary measures against the violators.

As many as 1,768 workers were reported killed and over 2,000 injured last year in workplace accidents, says a newspaper survey.

In the wake of a large number of casualties every year, the government just does its duty by enacting laws, but it never monitors whether the laws are implemented or violated.

Over 20 were reported killed and 150 injured, including the four deaths in recent Syed Steel Mill explosion in Kanchpur, in boiler and chimney blasts at re-rolling and rice mills and garment factories in the last five years.

According to Occupational Safety, Health and Environment (Oshe) Foundation, 40 blasts occurred only in rice mills last year.

Yet, no government agencies are inspecting those unsafe furnace boilers of the re-rolling or rice mills and garment factories.

According to existing laws, the government’s ‘boiler inspection office’ inspects boilers of sugar mills, textile and washing plants, cement factories, hotels and hospitals.

“Furnace chimneys of re-rolling steel mills don’t have any steam pressure boiler. So we don’t inspect those,” said an official from the boiler inspection office asking not to be named.

“The rice mill boilers should have come under our watch. But they don’t take clearance certificates from us as their investment is so small,” he said.

In reality, rice mills do not take clearance certificates from anybody, he added. He said they also do not keep records of the re-rolling and rice mills explosions.

The official went on to say that the department has only four inspectors to inspect 6,000 registered boilers in the country.

Besides four boiler inspectors, the office has only 13 general factory inspectors in three categories — general, safety (engineering) and medical — for more than 14,000 factories, including about 5,000 garment factories in Dhaka and Narayanganj.

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