Rana Plaza was a deathtrap. The eight-story building that will be remembered as the site of the worst garment factory disaster — if not the worst industrial accident — in history was the product of willful disregard of building codes by the owners; negligence, if not corruption, by local government officials and inspectors; and indifference on the part of the companies whose products were made there.
When the building collapsed April 24, more than 1,000 workers, mostly women, paid with their lives because of the callous disregard of others who saw them only as sources of profit.
Five garment factories operated in the Rana Plaza building, employing more than 3,400 people. They are part of a manufacturing industry that has turned Bangladesh into the second-largest garment exporter in the world, employs 3.6 million workers, most of them women, earns the country $20 billion a year and accounts for about 80 percent of the country's exports.