Dive Brief:

• A boiler exploded at the five-story Tampaco Foils Ltd. packaging factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh on Saturday, killing some 33 workers, injuring dozens more and causing a massive fire, multiple news outlets report. 

• Bangladesh is home to thousands of garment and packaging factories that supply global retailers like Wal-Mart and H&M. Tampaco Foils manufactured food and tobacco packaging, not apparel, but labor advocates in the textile manufacturing industry called for new safety measures to be extended to include boilers in light of the fire.

• In 2013, more than 1,100 garment workers were killed after Dhaka's Rana Plaza caught fire and collapsed; twice that many more were injured. The incident shed light on the low pay and terrible working conditions plaguing many global apparel workers, and led to promises of reform from clothing retailers worldwide.  

Dive Insight:

Factory safety is a major issue in Bangladesh, brought to the world’s attention by the Rana Plaza collapse. In 2012, another fire at a garment factory outside Dhaka suburb killed 112 workers, and a Gazipur, Bangladesh garment factory that supplied apparel for H&M and J.C. Penney ignited this February, putting workers there at risk.

Worker advocates continue to say that many factories in Bangladesh remain unsafe, and are trying to keep pressure on brands who promised reforms and improved safety measures. Clean Clothes Campaign and three other labor rights groups released a report earlier this year contending that safety renovations in H&M’s Bangladeshi factories were taking too long and that conditions continued to put workers at risk: A 2014 inspection of the factory found several fire and safety hazards that were to be corrected six months later, but few had been remedied, according to the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, which carried out follow-up inspections, including one as recently as the day before the Gazipur fire. 

Progress has been slow. Fast-fashion brands in particular have been cited for poor progress in this area, in part because factories are under such pressure to produce apparel especially quickly. And H&M has been singled out, with Clean Clothes Campaign noting that more than half of its factories in the country lacked fire doors or gates and a whopping 61% lacked fire exits.  

The issues are so widespread and so dire that progress has been understandably slow to some extent, but in some cases, progress is impeded by a lack of will and resources, advocates say. One of the sticking points is that many factory owners ignore problems if they believe their buildings are under the radar. 

“When it’s out of sight, they forget everything,” Kalpona Akter, the executive director of the Bangladesh Center for Workers Solidarity, told Quartz last year. “It’s been more than two years since Rana — I don’t believe factory owners learned anything from that.”