Leading Western brands including H&M and French supermarket Carrefour admitted their links today to the latest factory tragedy in Bangladesh after an overnight fire killed seven workers in a fabric mill.
Firefighters battled through the night to douse the inferno at the Aswad Knit Composite factory in Sripur on the outskirts of the capital Dhaka, which broke out when most of its 3,000 employees had gone home.
Workers said the blaze appeared to have been started by a malfunctioning knitting machine, while the country's top inspector said safety problems had been raised last month.
Police said most of the bodies found today after the flames were extinguished were too badly burned to be identified.
"This latest fire to affect the ready-made garment sector in Bangladesh reflects the sad and shocking truth that not enough is being done to address the safety and health of garment factory workers," the International Labour Organisation's director-general Guy Ryder said in a statement.
An AFP correspondent who picked through the still smouldering wreckage found work order books containing names of clients in September including US brand Gap, British retailer Next, Swedish fashion label H&M, Australia's Target and France's Carrefour.
H&M, Gap, Next and Carrefour said their clothes were not made in the factory, but admitted they placed orders with the owner, Palmal Industries, one of the country's largest garment groups.
None of them had audited the burnt-out mill, which was a fabric supplier to other separate garment manufacturing units of Palmal.
"Once the cause is known, as routine Next will review its procedures, including the extent to which it needs to look further down the supply chain -- particularly in high-risk areas such as Bangladesh," said a statement from the British retailer.
