Mapped: Bangladesh Still Has a Garment Factory Problem

When an eight-story Bangladeshi garment factory collapsed and killed more than 1,200 people in 2013, multinational companies vowed to better monitor working conditions in the world’s second-largest apparel export industry.

More than two-and-a-half years later, roughly three million Bangladeshi garment workers may remain at risk of injury or death, according to a new report released by New York University Thursday.

Safety programs like Bangladesh Accord for Fire and Building Safety and the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, which were implemented in the wake of the Rana Plaza collapse, only affect 27 percent of Bangladeshi factories, and out of the thousands of factories the government has inspected for safety violations, most have still not installed or finalized the recommended measures.

According to the NYU report, a massive misunderstanding of the scale of Bangladesh’s garment industry is at the heart of the Bangladeshi government and the international community’s inability to implement needed reforms. Despite previous estimates that the country is home to between 3,500 and 4,000 garment factories, Thursday’s report found that there are more than 7,000 — a significant number of which are not registered with the government.

Click here to visit an interactive map created by NYU, which shows every documented garment factory in Bangladesh. Click on a dot to learn more about that factory, including what it produces and how many people work there.

Photo Credit: Screengrab