Walmart says Bangladesh garment factory was 'making clothing for them without their knowledge'
Washington, Nov. 28 (ANI)
Walmart has revealed that the garment factory in Bangladesh where a recent fire killed 112 people was making clothes for the retail giant, apparently without its knowledge.
The US company said that the Tazreen Fashions Ltd factory was no longer authorized to produce clothes for its range, but that work had been sub-contracted by a supplier 'in direct violation of its policies'.
According to the Independent, it said it had now ended its relationship with the supplier.
"The fact that this occurred is extremely troubling to us, and we will continue to work across the apparel industry to improve fire safety education and training in Bangladesh," Walmart said in a statement.
Campaigners said that items for the clothing line of rapper P Diddy were also produced there.
The retailer and P Diddy are just the latest in a series of Western brands to have been linked to the factory, located in the Dhaka suburbs, the report said.
The fire on Saturday was among the deadliest of a number of blazes that have broken out in garment factories in Bangladesh in recent years.
According to the report, with small profit margins, the producers often skip safety and health regulations as they rush to fill orders for European and US markets.
Campaigners appealed to Sean Combs to demand better working conditions after releasing images that appeared to show dozens of images of the clothes' labels from inside the destroyed factory.
"We found clothing of ENYCE [the rapper's label] and Faded Glory [a Wal-Mart range]," Kalpona Akter, director of the Bangladesh Centre for Worker Solidarity, said.
Tahmina Rahman, general secretary of the Bangladesh Garment Workers Federation, said the government needed to do more to punish factories when there were such accidents, the report said.
Walmart said in its 2012 Global Responsibility report that it had stopped working with 49 factories in Bangladesh in 2011 because of fire safety issues, the report added.