The Rana Plaza Collapse Six years ago, photographer and activist Taslima Akhter took the haunting photograph ‘Final Embrace’, showing two garment workers embracing in the rubble, killed by the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory complex in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Time magazine identified the photo in its top ten of 2014 saying “A Final Embrace captures Bangladesh’s united grief of the Rana Plaza disaster in a single shot. No one knows who these two people are. The relation between them remains unidentified”.
“15 hours passed before she was saved from the remains.” On the 24th of April 2013, Rupaly was working her usual job as a machine operator in the New Wave Style factory. On the day prior, workers noticed cracks spreading across the walls that were not there the previous day, for this reason, they refused to enter. The supervisors insisted that the situation wasn’t as serious as they made it out to be saying “should problems occur, we’d face them together”. The manager then threatened to cut the wages of the employees who refused to enter as normal workers. Rupaly reluctantly agreed to walk into the building. They had only worked for a short time when Rupaly felt the floor underneath her feet began to sink. She attempted to run, however, the dividers encompassing her imploded. Everything was thundering, and in her desperate bid to escape, she fell. The following thing she recalls is being unable to move, with two bodies lying directly opposite to her. She understood that there were living
Individuals close by, yet she was unable to see a thing. More than 15 hours passed before she was saved from the remains. Rupaly couldn’t work for a year after the accident. She managed to sustain herself with help from private individuals, NGOs (Non-Government Organisations) and the State in the form of donations. She also had the emotional support of her husband Farid and her daughters Fahmida, 10, and Fahima, 7. When she finally did return to work in 2014, the very first garment factory she laboured in caught fire within weeks of beginning work. Nobody died in the incident but it was a major blow to Rupaly’s mental health, meaning she required a lot of courage to start work within a factory again. Four years after the collapse of Rana Plaza, Rupaly feels that the memories of the accident are not haunting her as much. “I feel stronger and braver than before”, Rupaly says. Before the disaster, Rupaly didn’t give much thought to society and politics; she saw herself as being responsible for her misfortune. Later, she came to understand that the factory owners and fashion brands bore the responsibility for the Rana Plaza factory collapse. Rupaly says that she now knows that workers and women have rights. Since this tragic incident, Rupaly has received a compensation fee of £4000. With this money, she has been able to buy a small property in her home village where she plans to build a house for her family.
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