“The Tazreen factory was no longer authorised to produce merchandise for Wal-Mart,” Wal-Mart said in a statement. “A supplier subcontracted work to this factory without authorisation and in direct violation of our policies.”
Wal-Mart declined to provide additional details, such as name the supplier or the timing of the factory being removed from its list of approved facilities.
Two days after the fire at the Tazreen Fashions factory on the outskirts of the capital, Dhaka, workers on Monday were forced to flee a blaze at a building housing three garment companies in another suburb of the capital. No one was reported killed in the latest fire, while the official toll in the Tazreen blaze rose to 112.
Li & Fung, the Hong Kong-based sourcing group that supplies Walmart, Target and other western retailers, promised on Monday to pay $1,200 to the family of each victim of the fire at the Tazreen factory and said it was “very distressed and saddened by the deaths of workers”.
Bangladesh has become a favoured supplier for clothes brands and retailers seeking to escape rising labour costs in China. It now has more than 4,000 clothing factories accounting for most of its $24bn exports last year.
In a report last year KPMG said that Bangladesh, alongside India and Indonesia, was best placed in Asia to combine lower costs with the scale of manufacturing needed by the largest clothes retailers. However, activists and consultants have warned that working conditions have failed to improve and in some situations have even deteriorated.
