DHAKA: A fund created to compensate victims of Bangladesh’s worst industrial disaster made its first payments Tuesday as the country prepared to mark the first anniversary of the Rana Plaza garment factory collapse.

The payments were made as a Geneva-based international labor group blasted Western retailers for their “woefully inadequate” contributions to the fund set up by the International Labour Organization (ILO).

An injured survivor and the mother of a deceased worker were each given around 50,000 taka ($640) at a ceremony.

“I’m happy. I want to use the money to set up a shop as I can’t work in a garment factory any longer,” Jesmin Akhter, 22, an unemployed survivor, told AFP after getting the cheque.

Akhter suffered backbone and leg injuries in the disaster.

Bangladesh’s deputy labor minister Mujibul Haque Chunnu and the ILO deputy director general, Gilbert Fossoun Houngbo, handed out the cheques at the ceremony.



The fund is paying around 3,000 people — survivors or families of the dead — 50,000 taka each as an advance against their claims. Bangladesh labor secretary Mikail Shipar said the maximum compensation is expected to total three million taka ($38,000).

The nine-story factory complex, where dozens of Western retailers were making clothing, collapsed on April 24 last year, killing 1,138 people and injuring more than 2,000.

British fashion clothing retailer Primark last month paid $640 to 580 people, who were survivors or relatives of victims at one of the five Rana Plaza factories.

The tragedy highlighted appalling safety conditions in Bangladesh’s $22-billion garment industry, the world’s second largest after China.

Primark was one of more than two dozen Western retailers which had clothing made at Rana Plaza.