Engineering ethics analysis of the collapse of Gena Building in Bangladesh

GuoliangYao

School of Economics and Management, Southeast University, Nanjing, China

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Abstract:On April 24, 2013, a tragedy occurred in Sava Township, Dhaka District, Bangladesh. The sudden collapse of an 8-story building shocked both at home and abroad. After 19 days of searching, rescuers finally confirmed the exact number of casualties on May 13, 2013, with 1,127 dead and more than 2,500 injured, making it one of the deadliest industrial accidents in Bangladesh's history. The collapse of the Gena building was a catastrophic event at the time, and the number of casualties was rare in the world, surpassing the number of casualties caused by the collapse of a department store in Korea in 1995.

Keywords:Building collapse; Major safety accident; Engineering ethics; Ethics of responsibility

1. Introduction

In Sava Township, Dhaka District, Bangladesh, on April 24, 2013, local time, an eight-story building suddenly collapsed, while the building was carrying out clothing work of about 3,122 workers. After the collapse, the local government of Bangladesh immediately sent a search and rescue team to rescue, after more than half a month of search and rescue work, only more than 40 workers were rescued alive, and eventually more than 1,000 people died and more than 2,500 were injured. The disaster was initially ruled an accident, but questions remained about the case from start to finish. The cause of the accident needs to be investigated in depth. Whether it was intentional or accidental is still to be determined, and the disaster has already happened. As a reference, how should we ensure that such things do not happen again? We also need to improve and issue corresponding methods (Barua, Wiersma, & Ansary, 2021).[1]

2. Background introduction

The building that collapsed was privately owned by Sohel Gena, known as Rana Plaza, which housed garment processing factories, Such as The Children's Place, Walmart, Monsoon Accessories,

DressBarn, Primack, Inglis, Benetton Group, etc., these clothing processing plants have a total of more than 5,000 workers, these workers are based in the building year-round production work. The Gena building also houses storefronts including department stores and banks, as well as processing plants that produce other goods. After the incident, Walmart claimed that its factory in the building had not been approved by Walmart headquarters. After an investigation, Ali Ahmed Khan, an official of the Bangladesh Fire and Civil Defense Department, determined that the building's permit only allowed the construction of the building's 1-4 floors, so the 5-8 floors were illegal and had been built without the approval of the local government (Huang, 2022).[2]

3. Case story

3.1.Case details

In the investigation after the collapse accident, it was found that the day before the collapse of the building, local prosecutors conducted a routine inspection of the building, found several cracks on the surface of the building, and then the prosecutors required the rapid evacuation of the building and the closure of the building. After getting the news, businesses and banks on the lower floors of the Gena building evacuated their staff and closed their stores. However, the garment factory located on the upper floor of the building did not choose to evacuate workers after receiving the news but informed workers that there was no safety problem in the building and asked workers to work normally the next day. Local people said that before the collapse of the Gena building, the local government had notified the building cracks were very serious but still did not get the attention of the relevant garment factory. At 9 a.m. on April 24, workers were working inside the building as usual when the back of the building suddenly began to collapse. In a very short time, all but the main pillar and part of the front wall collapsed. The disaster also reached a nearby three-story building, crushing it until the upper floors completely collapsed, leaving only the ground floor intact. A large number of women and children, mainly textile workers and students from the nursery, were in the building at the time of the accident, which attracted the attention of the United Nations. The United Nations said Bangladesh's economic situation limited its ability to assist.

Bangladesh's top officials took the collapse seriously. Muhiyuddin Khan Aramgir, then Bangladesh's minister of Home Affairs, said the fire and police departments and the rapid Action battalion had been involved in the rescue, and in addition to the public officials, a large number of volunteers had volunteered to help. The day after the accident, April 25, 2013, was declared a National Day of mourning by the Bangladeshi government. On the same day, the day after the incident, the local council issued a protest document blaming Sohel Gena, the owner of the building, as well as the heads of five garment factories.

On April 26, 2013, Sheikh Hasina, who was then Prime Minister of Bangladesh, ordered the arrest of Sohel Jena, the owner of the Jena building, and the head of the garment factory in the building, and the police quickly arrested and successfully arrested four people. On the same day, workers at garment factories in Dhaka, Bangladesh, rioted, damaging hundreds of vehicles and equipment at several factories. On April 27, leftist political parties in Bangladesh launched a nationwide strike, demanding that all suspects in the disaster be arrested and put on trial within five days, while the independent Commission began to look into the structural safety of factories across Bangladesh and began to investigate.

3.2.Casualties

After the building collapsed, the local government quickly launched a rescue operation, but due to the suddenness of the incident and lack of manpower, it had to arrange a large number of volunteers to participate in the rescue operation.

A large part of the rescue operation was made up of ill-equipped volunteers, many of whom had no protective clothing and wore sandals. Because the rescue was so slow, some of the buried workers had to drink urine to resist the heat and wait for the rescue. After 19 days of search, finally determined the number of casualties of the collapse of the building, the total number of casualties of more than 3,500 people, of which more than 2,500 people were seriously injured, and more than 1,000 people died. Much of the international media coverage of the incident used the words "a predictable massacre.

3.3.Accident result

Because of the severity of the collapse, the police expedited the process, quickly charging Gena, the owner of the building, and the heads of the garment factories involved, who face up to seven years in prison for violating Bangladesh's building code and causing the workers' deaths. Among the relatives of the dead workers, a family member accused Gena of murder, and the judge decided on the 25th to accept the case, if convicted of murder, three people will face death by hanging (Huang & Zhu, 2022).[3]

4. Case study

4.1.Construction safety level analysis

Only the 1-4 floors of the Jena building were approved by the local government, and the 5-8 floors were built without permission, which means that the Jena building is illegal and does not comply with the building code of Bangladesh. And according to people familiar with the matter, floors 5 to 8 do not have load-bearing walls.

4.2.Analysis of building bearing engineering level

Construction began in 2006, and the building was originally intended for shops and offices, but not for a factory. Therefore, when Rana Tower was designed, the strength of the structure did not take into account the weight and vibration of heavy machinery. Therefore, after investigation, the Bangladeshi authorities believed that the weight and vibration of a large number of heavy machines, such as generators and sewing machines, housed in the building caused the collapse of the building.

4.3.Accident effect

The collapse shocked the world, and the Bangladeshi government also paid great attention to it, flying the national flag at half-mast the next day to mourn the victims. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has vowed to severely punish those in charge of the garment factories. On the same day, a mass strike took place in Bangladesh, where workers mourned for the victims and protested against their poor working conditions.

4.4.Accident role analysis and liability problem

The person in charge of the garment factory - the person in charge of the garment factory is the direct cause of the accident. From the perspective of professional ethical responsibility, in "duty - responsibility", the person in charge fails to comply with his/her obligations and violates the principle of benefiting the public.

The owner of the collapsed building, Sohel Gena, illegally added four floors, which was the indirect cause of the accident. He violated the construction safety regulations and illegally added the building.

Rescue workers - on-site rescue workers to take timely rescue measures, people-oriented, life first.

The people - the people are the disseminators of accident information and have the right to know the cause of the accident. However, some people in the case spread rumors about the accident is not good, misleading the masses. So the public should judge the accident according to the facts they get. In the planning and construction stage of bridge construction, the people are also participants and give suggestions for bridge construction. Then, the people, as supervisors, supervise the problem of overload and report the problem in time. Monitor later to see if such an event occurs.

Government departments - the government part in the emergency response to the accident, can respond quickly, actively face, achieve unified command, and coordinated action. However, for the public, the release of the accident statement, the government, and relevant departments did not properly, did not release the primary information the first time, which also made the citizens suspicious. In the subsequent investigation of the accident, the government finally gave a response. In addition, the government should also take a warning from this accident.

5. Ethical analysis

5.1.An ethical analysis of the government of Bangladesh

The government should bear part of the responsibility for the accident. First of all, the government did not strictly enforce the law and act according to the rules. It did not effectively supervise and strictly manage the Gena building. Although the government has formulated a lot of laws and regulations in the construction of projects, due to the corruption of a large number of officials within the government and the acceptance of bribes from relevant factory owners, the laws regulations, and systems are virtually useless. Moreover, the garment industry is particularly important in Bangladesh. In 2012, a year before the incident, Bangladesh had more than 4,500 garment processing factories, which brought a large number of jobs to Bangladesh and promoted economic development and GDP growth. In 2012, Bangladesh became the world's second-largest garment exporter after China. At that time, China unanimously sought to promote industrial transformation, but Bangladesh focused on reducing production costs to maintain the core competitiveness of the local garment industry, in this context, the safety of workers can only be a secondary position, and the vulnerable position of workers is more prominent.

The basic problems of ethics can be summed up as failure to seriously perform supervision and management responsibilities, lax and inaccurate daily supervision and law enforcement, ineffective supervision of enterprises to investigate and eliminate major accident hidden dangers, lax inspection and acceptance of production resumption, failure to seriously perform supervision and management responsibilities, loopholes in supervision and law enforcement, and ineffective supervision and guidance of hidden dangers. This led to the failure to prevent the accident.

These departments have the mentality of fluke and conformity, they do not do their best in daily work, muddle through, and violate their professional ethical responsibilities; In the formulation of the emergency plan for accidents, the basic principles are not observed, and the prevention is given priority and the prevention is combined in the first place. The project risk assessment of the company was wrong, and the supervision and supervision were not in place; Failed to act ethically and responsibly as a management department (Li, Cong, & Wang, 2016).[4]

These related departments have violated the principle of fairness in engineering ethics; They fail to deal with the principles of people-oriented, prevention first, and system constraint, which further expands the project risk; In violation of his professional ethics. The relevant leading cadres violate their own professional responsibility ethics; The relationship between autonomy and responsibility, efficiency and fairness is not properly handled.

5.2.Ethical analysis of the person in charge of garment factory

The building itself is illegal construction, the building itself did not consider industrial use, without assessing the risk, leased to several garment processing factories, and allowed these factories to arrange a large number of production machines in the building, and finally due to the weight of the generator sewing machine and other vibration, resulting in the collapse of the existing problems of the building. The person in charge of the garment factory regards money as life and safety as dung, and the local government verified the day before the incident that there were a large number of cracks in the building, and asked the workers of the business to quickly evacuate and close the building. However, the unscrupulous factory owner told the workers that the building was safe and forced them to return to work the next day, which led to this tragedy.

The basic problem of ethics can be summarized as the problem of public and private. The violation of the garment factory shows that the person in charge only cared about his economic interests and ignored public safety. Personal interests eventually lead to the occurrence of major security accidents and then damage the public interest.

6. Conclusions

The death toll from the collapse of the Gena building in Bangladesh's Sava district has risen to 1,127, with more than 2,500 injured. The collapse of the Gena building in Sava District, Bangladesh has also sounded the alarm for the quality of engineering in our country, and we should take corresponding measures to prevent the collapse of accidents. After China's reform and opening up, due to the rapid development of the national economy, China's engineering construction market is constantly expanding, the scale is also growing, and the number of engineering construction employees is also increasing. At the same time of rapid growth, the management and norms of work are also very important and need to be paid attention to. Due to the imperfect work, building collapse incidents occasionally occur in our country. We should fully learn the lessons of the collapse of the Gena building, combined with the recovery of the collapse of buildings in our country, find out the reasons, solve the relevant problems, and do a good job to improve the work, make adequate protection for the follow-up work, and always put the safety issue in the first place (Wang & Huang, 2020).[5]

In the case of the building collapse in Sava district, Bangladesh, I think it is more a manifestation of Hine's law. Ohain's law (Ohain's law): All serious accidents will have a warning, before every serious accident, there will be multiple minor accidents and there are multiple accident risks. Hine method emphasizes two points: first, time change leads to qualitative change, and all accidents do not happen overnight; The second point is that no matter how perfect and perfect the technology and system are, in practice, the quality and sense of responsibility of people are more important. Hine's Law should be remembered by companies as a reminder that accidents don't happen for no reason and that a disaster can be avoided if the signs are spotted and paid enough attention.

In solving such engineering safety problems, the governance system needs to be improved, law enforcement efforts need to be strengthened, the relevant law enforcement departments should pay attention to the promotion of the work, and strive to supplement the shortcomings, actively take effective countermeasures to improve the level of engineering safety governance.

References

[1] Barua, U., Wiersma, E., & Ansary, M.. (2021). Can rana plaza happen again in bangladesh?. Safety Science, 135.

[2] Huang Zhong.(2022).Progress and Challenges in the Remedy Framework of UN GuidinPrincipleson Business and Human Rights: Lessons from Rana Plaza. Human rights research, (4), 65-92.

[3] Huang Yan, Zhu Xiaolei.(2022).Global Labor Governance: Protection of Workers' Rights in Garment Industry of Bangladesh after Rana Plaza Incident. Development and research, (3), 129-139.

[4] Li Zhengfeng, Cong Hangqing, & Wang Qian.(2016).Engineering Ethics.Beijing: TsinghuaUniversity Press.

[5] Wang Su, HuangShuai.(2020).How important building safety audits are in global supply chains. Imp-Exp Executive, (6), 56-58.