The Clean Clothes Campaign

Six months after the collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory building in Bangladesh, more than 15 brands whose clothes were produced there have yet to agree to pay long-term compensation to injured workers or the families of the 1,129 people who died.

The Clean Clothes Campaign, an international workers' rights pressure group, has written to brands including Spanish fashion company Inditex, UK workwear producer Premier and US supermarket Walmart, all of which had sold clothing made within Rana Plaza, calling on them to help victims of the disaster.

It says: "Clean Clothes Campaign would like to see all brands that were sourcing either directly or indirectly from factories housed in Rana Plaza commit, and implement, the payment of full and fair compensation for all victims' families and the survivors of Rana Plaza.

"They must also agree a way forward in dealing with compensation when accidents do occur, to avoid making a tragic situation worse with months of uncertainty for the survivors and families left behind, who are left with no income, high medical bills and a real risk of destitution."

In recent weeks, Benetton, the Italian fashion brand, finally joined nine other companies, including Primark, Matalan and Bonmarché from the UK and Loblaw from Canada, in discussing long-term compensation arrangements for Rana Plaza victims. But workers are likely to have to wait until the New Year to receive that money as negotiations continue about the scale of payments and how workers will be paid.

Inditex, the owner of the Zara chain, stopped sourcing from within the factory building in 2012 after its supplier there failed to take steps to improve standards. The Spanish retailer said it had provided support in the immediate aftermath of the factory collapse. This week it agreed to put some cash into the compensation fund overseen by the ILO to help Rana Plaza victims, provided it was extended to other victims of garment factory disasters in Bangladesh.

US giant Walmart is not involved in helping victims despite documentary evidence that its products were made in the building just a year ago. The retailer says that the work was unauthorised and no production was being carried out at Rana Plaza at the time of the accident.

Primark and other brands have paid out short-term financial aid to Rana Plaza workers but that money will run out at the end of this month and no firm plans for further financial assistance are in place at this point.

Katherine Kirk, Primark's ethical trading director, says: "We've no doubt that Rana Plaza has been a big wake-up call for the industry as a whole.

The British retailer, which bought clothes from a factory that took up one floor of the Rana Plaza building, has built a database of just over 3,600 people who were affected by the collapse, including family members of those who died. This took months because of poor record keeping and the loss of documents in the disaster. About 300 people have yet to be identified and some have slipped through the net.

Kirk admits a small number of those eligible for compensation are still to be registered but Primark has worked with a local bank to sign up thousands of people to bank accounts to enable two rounds of short-term support to be paid to those workers. This system should ensure that funds from the international compensation effort can be distributed

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