But when such death occurs due to human negligence and callousness, as it did in the case of KTS garments factory at Chittagong, one has got to feel scared and weary. The death toll in the worst ever garments factory fire at Chittagong this time rose to 56 so far with 100 injured and hundreds still missing, believed trapped and feared dead inside the charred four-storied factory building.

The death figures included 45 women workers out of some 600 workers, mostly women, who were working inside the building in the night shift. As reports indicated, some 400 garments workers have died and 1,500 been injured in fire related incidents in garments factories since 1990.

What is most appalling is that because of a deliberate effort to keep the death figure low by the factory owners, the actual casualty figures were always based on newspaper reports.

With the country still reeling under the trauma and shock of the Chittagong garments fire, the worst ever industrial fire incident in Bangladesh, people were jolted by another devastating incident of building collapse at Mohakhali last Saturday evening, that crushed 20 people, mostly construction workers, to death, and many others are buried alive under the debris as the six-storied building owned by the Phoenix Fabrics collapsed due to faulty construction.

These two incidents of factory fire and building collapse were terrible incidents. These tragic deaths seemed to have touched a chord in all of us because the garments industry, employing the largest labour force in the country, especially women, is a part of our national pride and existence.

Now the very work place where young men and women go to earn a living has the shadow of death over it. The incident occurred as hundreds of workers panicked over a fire caused by boiler explosion followed by short circuiting in the whole four-storied building complex, and made a desperate bid to escape through the narrow emergency staircase, wide enough for only one person to walk in.

In Chittagong garments fire incident, the over-cautious management immediately after sensing the fire spark ordered the collapsible gate of the main entrance to be locked in a silly and sinister attempt to prevent theft of the factory products, and on the other hand the emergency exit was neither lighted nor it had space enough to allow such a huge number of people to get out in such a short time when the whole building complex was pitch dark. The chaos and confusion in the wake of such an indiscreet decision resulted in such a huge number of people being roasted alive or dying by asphyxiation or stampede.

Systematic flouting of safety norms and a breakdown in regulation have turned the country's garments factories into veritable death traps. Even today people recall with shock the fire incident in the last year when 28 garments workers in the SAAN garments factory at Siddhirganj were roasted alive. The death toll in the Dora garments in 2001 rose to 16, and the largest death toll of 48 occurred in the same year in the knitwear garments factory situated in the BSCIC industrial estate at Narsingdi.

A post disaster sweep in some of the garments factories in Dhaka and Chittagong in 2001 revealed the sorry state of affairs About 1,400 out of 2,600 garments factories in the country lack adequate fire fighting tools, and almost 50 per cent of the factories have no exit routes for emergency evacuation.

The garments owners association (BGMEA) along with the ministerial committee set up by the government has so far identified ten causes for such mishaps. These include absence of alternative stairs or emergency exit routes, lack of fire-fighting equipment and materials, faulty gas and electric lines in the factories, violation of building codes that prohibit installing a labour intensive and fire-prone factory above the second floor, non-use of fire retardant materials in walls and the roof, use of low quality fittings, lack of proper warning signal arrangement during a disaster, and lack of disaster drill and training of workers that help them quit the premises in an orderly manner without creating chaos in times of emergency.

After making a tour of the garments factories in the city, one gets a somewhat unhappy impression. In most of these factories, fire safety checks are non-existent. The units are housed in buildings least suited to fire-prone factories with poor safety standards, have a near absence of emergency exits, and operate without a valid license from the fire service and civil defense directorate. Often, the fire safety certificates are taken not from the fire department but the electrical inspectorate that knows little about the fire prevention system.

Reports revealed in the initial probe indicated that KTS garments factory did not have any valid license. Most shockingly, an industry that employs about 30 lakh workers, mostly women, in two big cities, and now ranks as the biggest foreign exchange earner, has given little attention towards ensuring safety and security of its workers. No sensible citizen in the country can compromise the idea of allowing such a vital industry to operate with so little accountability and so scarce periodic inspections or no inspections of its machineries and electrical installations.

In most cases, building laws are violated with impunity. Most of the factories have exit routes or stairs throttled with waste clothes and baskets full of waste. Most shockingly, in most cases the main entrance gate remains locked without the guard being available to offer immediate assistance on humane consideration. Think of the colossal problem that is likely to be created when some 500 to 600 workers, mostly untrained and uneducated women from the rural areas, want to evacuate through such a narrow three-foot staircase after either hearing a fire alarm or seeing fire spark or smoke in their working areas.

Death and casualty figures in the KTS garments in Chittagong were so high because of the main gate being locked even after the fire engulfed the whole building. Despite the fact that a series of accidents have taken place in quick succession, taking a heavy toll of lives and property, the licensing authorities or the administration never showed up or visited these factories to see if these units meet the safety regulations and norms.

Most of the factories situated in high rise buildings in the narrow by-lanes and densely populated residential areas are almost inaccessible to fire tenders. The Jatiya Sangsad on February 26 passed a toothless law that empowers the government to inflict punishment on a non-compliant owner of the building or an employee of the government of a prison term that may extend to seven years or with fine of not less than Tk.50,000, or with both. Conscious citizenry thinks this is hardly a deterrent to check the menacing rise of unscrupulous and illegal activities in the construction arena.

Given the terrible toll, some questions were inevitable: who were the persons responsible, the owners or the government agencies or both? The most pertinent question is whether the recalcitrant government agencies and callous factory owners will escape through the exit routes of law that could always be bent in favour of the high and mighty.

In almost no other country in the world could 55 victims have died in such a tragic and needless fashion. They died because of the insensitivity, callousness, and criminal apathy of the garments owners and the concerned agencies in the government. It is this that we are inclined to forget in the plethora of commissions, committees, and whitewashes that will go into the incident.

With smoke filling the hall room and fire engulfing the building, it seems unbelievable that the management could have kept the main collapsible gate locked to protect factory products and imported valuables. A little human consideration could have saved many lives.

Hapless workers will continue to die like KTS garments workers did. They will die over and over, in incident after incident, until we recognize that the administration in the country is now so venal, so apathetic, so inhuman that it could not care less. We also need to realize that until all of us -- you, me, everybody gets up and says enough is enough, nothing is going to change.

Md. Asadullah Khan is a former teacher of physics and Controller of Examinations, BUET.