The Bangladesh Nationalist Party on Thursday demanded the enactment of a law for ensuring the payment of sufficient compensation to workers who fall victim to workplace accidents.
The party’s standing committee member Nazrul Islam Khan on behalf of the committee placed the demand at a virtual press conference over the Hashem Foods Limited factory fire in Narayanganj that claimed at least 50 lives.
He said that fixing compensation for workers after each workplace accident becomes an issue of great debate for the absence of satisfactory compensation scheme.
‘We propose that a new law should be enacted for paying compensations to workers. The act will say what will be the compensation for the injured, what will be the compensation for the dead, what action will be taken against the employer and who will oversee it,’ he said.
He said that the party urged the International Labour Organisation to formulate such standards in accordance with the scheme devised for paying compensation to the victims of Rana Plaza building collapse.
‘We should keep it in mind that people go to work to save lives, to earn a living. If people have to give their lives prematurely while working there, then it is not a factory, it is a death trap,’ he said.
The Fire Service and Civil Defence department recovered 48 more bodies after a fire broke out at a Hashem Foods Ltd factory at Rupganj in Narayanganj on July 8 while three others died in hospitals.
