Rana Plaza: what changed in Bangladesh’s garment factories since 2013

On 24 April 2013 the Rana Plaza building on the outskirts of Dhaka, which housed five garment factories, collapsed. According to the ILO, at least 1,132 people were killed and more than 2,500 were injured, most of them garment workers. The disaster led to a legally binding safety agreement between brands and unions, independent inspections of thousands of export factories, a larger government inspectorate and a compensation scheme. This guide sets out what changed, what inspections cover today and how a buyer checks a factory’s safety status before ordering.

What happened on 24 April 2013

Rana Plaza was a multi-storey building that housed five garment factories. It collapsed on 24 April 2013. The ILO’s figures, which are the ones most often cited, are at least 1,132 dead and more than 2,500 injured. Other counts published in the months afterwards differ slightly, because some of the missing were identified only later; the ILO’s own update 100 days after the collapse gave 1,127 lives lost at that date.

The scale of the disaster made clear that the problem was not a single building. Thousands of export factories had been built or extended without reliable structural, electrical or fire safety checks, and the government inspectorate was too small to catch it. The responses that followed were designed to fix that system, not only to investigate one site.

The immediate response: the Joint Statement and the National Action Plan

Within two weeks, on 4 May 2013, the government, employers’ organisations and workers’ organisations signed a Joint Statement with the ILO setting out a response agenda. On 25 July 2013 they combined it with an existing national plan into the National Tripartite Plan of Action on Fire Safety and Structural Integrity for the garment sector. The Bangladesh Labour Act was amended the same year.

The key dates, in order:

The Accord and what came after it

The Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh was signed on 15 May 2013 by international brands and retailers, two global union federations and Bangladeshi trade unions. It was different from earlier voluntary codes in three ways. It was legally binding on the brands that signed. Its inspections were carried out by independent engineers, not by the brands’ own auditors. And the results were published.

According to the Worker Rights Consortium, signatory brands commit to open their supplier factories to independent inspection, to allow the results to be reported publicly in a searchable database, to help pay for essential repairs, and to stop doing business with factories that refuse to make them. The agreement includes an enforcement mechanism under which legal action can be brought against a signatory that does not comply. The ILO notes that more than 200 brands and retailers from over 20 countries signed.

North American brands formed a separate programme, the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, which ran alongside the Accord. Nirapon, a separate safety membership organisation, was created in 2018.

The Accord has changed form twice. In June 2020 its work inside Bangladesh passed to the RMG Sustainability Council (RSC), a national body whose board includes industry, brands and trade unions. In September 2021 the brands and unions signed the International Accord, which kept the binding framework and allowed safety programmes in other countries. A renewed International Accord took effect on 1 November 2023, alongside a separate Bangladesh Safety Agreement that continues the programme through the RSC. The Pakistan Accord, the first programme outside Bangladesh, began on 1 January 2023 and covers more than 500 factories in Sindh and Punjab.

What the first round of inspections found

Between 2013 and 2015 the ILO reports that 3,780 actively exporting garment factories were assessed for structural, electrical and fire safety, through the Accord, the Alliance and a government-led national initiative for factories that neither programme covered. 39 factories were judged to pose an imminent danger to workers and were closed immediately. The rest were given corrective action plans: lists of faults, each with a fix and a deadline.

The faults fell into the same areas that are still inspected today, set out in the table below. Many of them could only be fixed by building work rather than paperwork, which is why remediation has run for years and why progress is still reported factory by factory.

What changed in government oversight

Much of the lasting change sits with the state. According to the ILO:

• The number of labour inspectors at the Department of Inspection for Factories and Establishments (DIFE) grew from 92 to 393.
• Fire service inspectors grew from 55 to 365.
• About 6,000 workplace safety committees have been set up across sectors.
• An Industrial Safety Unit was established in 2022.
• A pilot Employment Injury Scheme, run with the ILO, pays benefits to workers injured at work and to the families of those killed, and runs until the end of 2028.

The employment injury pilot matters because of what happened after Rana Plaza. The ILO has noted that no compensation was paid in line with the labour code at the time; instead a one-off arrangement had to be negotiated. Through the Rana Plaza Arrangement, more than US$34 million was paid to injured workers and the families of those who died, with payments completed by October 2015. A permanent injury scheme is meant to make that negotiation unnecessary next time.

What safety inspections cover today

For a factory covered by the RSC, safety is not a single certificate. The programme inspects four areas, and each produces its own report:

Alongside the inspections, the programme trains joint safety committees of managers and workers in each factory and runs a complaints mechanism through which workers can raise safety concerns directly. Workers under the Accord framework also have the right to refuse unsafe work.

Two limits are worth stating plainly. The programme covers factories that supply its signatory brands, not every factory in Bangladesh. And an inspection covers a building, so an order quietly moved to an uncovered subcontractor is outside it. That is why knowing the exact factory making your goods matters more than any general statement about the country.

It also explains why a remediation percentage should be read with care. A factory can show a high overall rate while one serious item, such as a missing fire door or an unfinished structural repair, stays open. Ask which items remain, when each is due, and who is paying for the work, and write the answer into your supplier file.

How a buyer checks a factory’s status today

You do not need to be a signatory brand to see the results. The International Accord publishes a search page for factories in Bangladesh showing each factory’s inspection reports, its corrective action plan, its remediation progress rate and its safety training status. A careful buyer uses it like this:

1. Get the factory’s legal name and address in writing before you place the order. A supplier who will not name the factory cannot be checked.
2. Search the factory on the Accord’s Bangladesh factory list. Note whether it is listed, its progress rate, and whether any items are marked as behind schedule.
3. Download the latest corrective action plan and read the open items, not only the percentage. An open fire-exit item is more serious than an open paperwork item.
4. If the factory is not listed, ask which programme inspected it and for the reports. Factories supplying only non-signatory buyers may have been assessed under the government programme instead.
5. Add a social audit for wages, hours and working conditions, which safety inspections do not cover. Our guide to BSCI, WRAP and SMETA audits explains the options.

The same approach works for certificates: check each one with the body that issued it. Our guide on how to verify factory certificates in Bangladesh covers the registries and what a genuine record looks like.

What Rana Plaza did not change

Safety inspection changed a great deal; wages and bargaining power changed far less. Our guide to quality and ethics in Bangladesh covers the wider picture, and the guide to garment factories in Bangladesh sets out how many there are and where. The honest summary is that the building-safety system Bangladesh has today exists because of what happened on 24 April 2013, and that it only protects workers in the factories it actually reaches.

What to do next

If you are choosing a factory in Bangladesh, make its safety record part of the first conversation: its name, its Accord or RSC status, its latest corrective action plan and a recent social audit. CMB Sourcing places each order in an audited partner factory, names that factory in writing before production and shares its audit reports with you. Read how our compliance and audit checks work, or tell us about your product and we will reply within one working day.