A 13-year-old survivor and her rescuer meet one year on from the collapse of the garment factory that killed more than 1300. (
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/bangladesh/10783733/Bangladeshs-Rana-Plaza-tragedy-lives-on-for-the-child-workers-who-survived.html)
By Dean Nelson, in New Delhi and Muktadir Rashid in Dhaka
Didar Hossain is still trying to come to terms with the shock of what he had to do to rescue Aanna Khatun. It was a year ago that the Rana Plaza garment factory in the Bangladesh capital, Dhaka, collapsed, taking with it the lives of 1,133 people.
Aanna was one of the lucky ones – not that she knew it at the time. Her hand was trapped under a heavy machine in a dark tunnel of fragmented concrete. She was surrounded by the bloodied corpses of workmates.
Doctors at the scene had refused to enter the rubble to help her but 29-year-old Mr Hossain, a machine operator at a neighbouring garment factory, had already rescued 17 people when he heard Aanna call out for help.
Armed with a scalpel, an anaesthetic injection and a few words of advice from the medics he set off to cut off Aanna's hand. "I gave her the injection and started cutting. The knife did not seem to be that sharp. It was hard. I was weeping and Aanna was weeping. It hurt her a lot. The whole rescue took four hours," he said at the time. The shock remains with him.
And earlier this week, when the patient and amateur surgeon were reunited nearly a year on from that terrible day, Mr Hossein had another shock in store.
Aanna revealed she was only 13 years old when he found her – not the working woman he had thought she was but a child labourer. Her disclosure deepened his anguish over the amputation and once again highlighted the real cost of child labour in keeping Western High Street fashion brands so cheap.
When Aanna and Mr Hossain spoke to the Telegraph after their emotional reunion, she revealed that her 14-year-old sister and another 13-year-old girl were also working in the fifth floor Ethertex factory, which lists Walmart and C&A as clients, when the eight-storey building collapsed. Both survived.
The dead and the 2,500 injured last year had been making garments for Primark, Matalan, Benetton, and Mango, among other fashion brands and the link between their fatal working conditions and high street bargain prices provoked some soul searching in Britain and around the world.
In the year since the collapse, there have been further revelations of young women and girls being beaten, threatened and forced to work 14 hour days without a break, while some of Britain's most popular brands have declined to contribute to compensation.
Aanna's age highlights a significant use of illegal child labour in Rana Plaza's factories. A survey of 1,436 survivors by Actionaid found 202 were under 18, while research by Human Rights Watch found evidence that child workers were forced to hide in lavatories when buyers and inspectors visited.
"There were three other girls of my age," 14-year-old Yaa Noor Akhter, one of Aanna's colleagues at Ethertex, told the group. Bangladeshi law allows 14-year-olds to work five hours per day for three days a week, but these children were working from 8am to 10pm six days a week, she said.
Aanna had joined the company just over three weeks before the collapse after her sister, Bannya Khatun, was employed there. An Ethertex manager denied that the company employed child labour, but Aanna gave the Telegraph a copy of her birth certificate, which states she was born on Jan 1, 2000.
In a Dhaka restaurant earlier this week Aanna and her hero, Mr Hossain, spoke of their recurring nightmares and flashbacks. "When I'm alone, I just recall the incident … I regret it. I told her mother that perhaps I had made a huge loss for your family," Mr Hossain said as Aanna reassured him he had saved her life.
Aanna, meanwhile, suffers from severe post-traumatic stress syndrome, pain, and feels too embarrassed by the loss of her writing hand to go to school. She cannot join in games with friends or help cook family meals and insists on sleeping under a tin roof. She has received some financial assistance – a 12,000 Taka [£92] per month emergency allowance from the government and £345 from Primark, even though her employer did not supply the firm. That income is considerably higher than the 4,000 Taka [£30] a month she earned from Ethertex but it is not enough for a useful prosthetic hand.
A local charity fitted a cheap artificial hand last November but she said it was heavy, uncomfortable and of limited use. She covers her arm with a scarf.
"One year ago I had both hands but now I have only one and I cannot work. I can simply hold a glass of water. Others can work, cook, wear dresses and play but I can't," she said, close to tears.
She feels humiliated that she cannot go to the lavatory unaided. Her mother has to clean her, dress her and comb her hair.
Two of the companies listed by her employer as buyers, Walmart and C&A, have declined to offer direct compensation to victims or say if they plan to help Aanna. They did not have any orders with Ethertex at the time of the collapse, they said. Walmart said it has pledged £9 million to improve working conditions in Bangladesh's garment industry and made a £1.8 million donation to BRAC, the Bangladesh charity that fitted Aanna's prosthetic hand and gives her £7 a month in assistance. C&A said it had given £410,000 to the Rana Plaza Donors Trust Fund.
The fund, which is managed by the International Labour Organisation, hopes to raise £23 million to help victims and their families, but so far has received just £9 million. Only 13 of 29 foreign fashion brands whose clothes were made at Rana Plaza have agreed to contribute.
Kalpana Akhtar, a campaigner, said Aanna's case had shown that foreign brands had failed to detect child labour in their suppliers' factories and must now support her rehabilitation.
"Modern technology can make Aanna's life easier. She won't get back what she lost but the owner, government and brands have a responsibility to ensure she has a normal life," she said.
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