The death toll of a factory collapse south of Lahore, Pakistan rose to 24 on Thursday as rescuers searched through the rubble to pull out more survivors.
Workers say they saw cracks appear in the building’s structure moments before it collapsed. The owner had been adding a new floor to the factory, which made plastic shopping bags for Rajput Polymer, but had ignored advice from the contractor and requests from the employees to stop construction after a 7.5 magnitude earthquake shook the region last week and created cracks in the walls. Officials say about 150 people were inside at the time of crash.
Punjab Chief Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif ordered an inquiry into the collapse and has promised strict action against Sundar Industrial Estate, the industrial complex where the factory was located, if any negligence is uncovered. The Punjab government has also announced that it will give the families of those who are killed 500,000 rupees (about $4,700) each of compensation.
Global union IndustriALL also says that workers claim they were being paid less than the minimum wage of 13,000 rupees a month (or $122) and were working 12-hour shifts. The workers at the factory were also unregistered, so no one knows how many may be still trapped under the rubble.
Pakistan has experienced a number of recent factory collapses. Just two months ago, four workers were killed and 16 injured when the roof of a garment factory producing for Primark, TOPMAN, Burton, and other brands caved in. The worst accident in the country’s history happened in 2012, when a fire at a garment factory in Karachi killed 289 people. That same day, 25 people were killed in a separate shoe factory fire. Buildings in the country are often constructed poorly, and safety violations were rampant in the Karachi factory: steel bars blocked the windows and there were no firefighting equipment or emergency plans.
Those tragedies don’t seem to have brought much change. Three years later, the families of those killed in that collapse say they are still waiting for compensation.
Safety is a problem that plagues factories in many of the world’s main garment exporters. But even after the collapse in Bangladesh that killed more than 1,100 people in 2013, progress is slow. There are other lingering problems as well, such as low pay. Workers in 15 of the 21 major garment exporters to the U.S. make about a third of what would amount to a living wage, on average.