Remembering Rana Plaza: Bangladesh has changed, but the narrative has not

Today, the fashion industry remembers Rana Plaza – and it should. On April 24, 2013, 1,134 people died in the deadliest disaster the garment industry has ever seen. Rana Plaza wasn’t just a building collapse. It was a moral collapse along global supply chains. The catastrophe revealed what happens when speed, low costs and distance from risk are allowed to dominate the system.

Written for FashionUnited by Assef Shaikh, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Harnest. Harnest is a Bangladesh-based, vertically integrated manufacturer of threads, elastics, yarns, trims, labels and packaging, supplying apparel brands worldwide.

A new narrative for Bangladesh?

I write this as a manufacturer in Bangladesh and as someone who has seen the transformation of the industry here from the inside. And this change has been far more significant than the global narrative suggests.

Rana Plaza forced a reckoning. It uncovered failings in the areas of safety, governance and procurement culture. What also became clear was that if Bangladesh was to remain central to the global fashion industry, trust needed to be restored through real, measurable change.

More than a decade later, there is another truth we must face. Resilience does not come from avoiding mistakes. It comes from being forced to fix mistakes—publicly, repeatedly, and on a large scale.

This is exactly what the last decade has been about. Not about perfection. Not about perfection. But about sustainable, visible change under close observation.

Since 2013, nearly 4,000 export-oriented factories in Bangladesh have been inspected through joint national and international safety programs. The Accord brought control and enforceable remedies the likes of which the industry had never seen before. As of October 2018, more than 122,000 safety defects were identified in the factories covered. Around 90 percent of these have been proven to have been remedied.

This level of response is still too often overlooked. It didn’t happen by chance. It happened because regulations, buyer pressure, public scrutiny and enforceable mechanisms changed the operating environment.

And yet the narrative has not kept pace with this reality. This regulatory course is evolving. The framework conditions for employment administration have been continuously improved. Ongoing reforms aim to strengthen worker protection, representation and enforcement capacity. Progress is not linear, but it is visible.

The same applies to environmental protection. Bangladesh is now home to the largest number of LEED-certified green factories in the world. This includes more than half of the world’s 100 highest-rated green factories. This is not a symbolic achievement. It reflects years of capital investment in water efficiency, energy systems, waste management, factory design and operational discipline. It also reflects a broader shift in mentality.

In the best-performing factories, sustainability is no longer just a reporting requirement for buyers. It is increasingly part of the industrial strategy.

The biggest change is not just in safety or sustainability. It lies in the maturity of the production.

Too often, Bangladesh is still discussed as a low-wage procurement market with a tragic past. This classification is no longer applicable.

Bangladesh remains the second largest garment exporter. The industry did not improve by being marginalized. It improved while remaining a central part of global supply chains. The strongest factories here no longer compete solely on price. They compete on control, consistency, technical ability and resilience. They will be judged on whether they can meet a more demanding standard of supply chain partnership.

This is important today because sourcing is changing and perception plays a direct role in where it shifts.

Regulatory developments in Europe, including the evolving ‘Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive’, are increasing expectations for companies. They are expected to identify, manage and disclose risks in their supply chains.

The direction is clear. Visibility, accountability and risk management are becoming key factors in sourcing decisions. Bangladesh’s strongest factories are better positioned for this change than the country’s reputation suggests.

At Harnest I experience this first hand. Customers are increasingly demanding evidence of control, accountability and operational discipline, not just capacity and costs. This is a very different conversation than the one Bangladesh was having a decade ago.

Not a simplistic success story

None of this means the industry has solved its problems, it hasn’t. Wages remain a critical issue relative to the cost of living. Advances in labor standards cannot be separated from purchasing practices. Suppliers cannot be expected to bear the costs of higher standards while margins continue to fall.

Progress was also uneven. The formal, export-oriented segment of the sector has made the most progress. Smaller subcontractors and informal workplaces still pose risks. The top level has changed significantly, but this standard is not yet universal.

So Bangladesh doesn’t need a simplistic success story. It takes an honest one.

Rana Plaza should never be trivialized or forgotten. The point is not to replace tragedy with complacency. It’s about recognizing that Bangladesh is responding to this trauma with one of the most intensive reform efforts the garment industry has ever seen. Security systems are improving. Environmental performance improves. Regulation is tightening, corporate governance is evolving and investments are growing. And some of the strongest factories in this country are helping to define the future of fashion supply chains.

To say that Bangladesh has stood still in 2013 is no longer a fair assessment. It overlooks more than a decade of visible industrial change.

In my view, the legacy of Rana Plaza should not be a permanent stigma for Bangladesh. It should be proof that an industry can change under pressure. It should show that production can become safer, more modern and more responsible when regulation, investment and accountability come together.

Bangladesh has changed. Not the narrative. The real question is whether sourcing decisions are ready to catch up.