DHAKA: Controversial labor leader of Bangladesh Kalpona Akter and 26 of her associates were held in New Jersy while carrying out ‘Rana Plaza campaign’ in New Jersey.

On Thursday, the 27 people– including the Rana Plaza survivor and Kalpona Akter and Mahinur Begum, an 18-year-old survivor of the factory disaster – were arrested at the headquarters of The Children’s Place in Secaucus, New Jersey, as they sought to drop off a letter to the company’s chief executive. The police charged them with trespassing, said an international news organisation.
 
Kalpona Akter was however released on Thursday after being held for two hours.

They have visited 16 American college campuses over the past three weeks, urging students to press two major retailers – The Children’s Place and Benetton – to contribute millions of dollars to help the families of those who died in the Rana Plaza factory building collapse.

Kalpona Akter, executive director of the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity, faced several surprising setbacks during her trip.

According to leaders and owners of Bangladesh readymade garments Industry, Kalpona Akter is destroying the industry and is receiving money from foreigners and using it against the industry.

Kalpona Akter’s trip to the US was sponsored and organized by the International Labor Rights Forum, a not-for-profit advocacy group, and United Students Against Sweatshops, which has chapters on more than 150 college campuses. Noting that The Children’s Place had been a major customer of one of the factories in the Rana Plaza building before it collapsed, Akter and the two groups called on the company to contribute $8m to the Rana Plaza Donors’ Trust Fund. Thus far, The Children’s Place has contributed $450,000.

Customs documents show that The Children’s Place received shipments of more than 120,000lbs of clothes from the New Wave factory inside Rana Plaza in the eight months before the building collapsed, with a large shipment arriving in Georgia 19 days before the collapse. The Children’s Place said it was no longer having any garments produced in the building at the time of the collapse.

On Saturday, The Children’s Place did not respond to requests for comment. Last year its general counsel, Bradley P Cost, said the company was making “a large and long-term commitment to improve safety conditions for Bangladeshi garment workers”. The Children’s Place and 25 other North American retailers have set up the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety to inspect and make safety improvements at Bangladesh garment factories.

Kalpona Akter now faces a 24 March court date in New Jersey, on charges of trespassing at Children’s Place headquarters.

Liana Foxvog, a spokeswoman for the International Labor Rights Forum, said: “All 27 of those arrested are facing charges. No charges have been dropped.”

Family members and relatives of 909 Rana Plaza victims received Tk 22.11 crore from the Bangladesh Prime minister’s relief fund. They (Father, mother, brother, sister, husband or wife of victims) were given cheques after DNA test. Apart from that the injured were also get financial assistance from government. 

Kalpona Akter, from her own interest, is carrying out the campaign abroad to collect fund. She, joined by Mahinur Begum and other is now visiting the US to pressure companies in the name of improving apparel industry safety in Bangladesh and contributing to a fund for victims of the Rana Plaza collapse, in which more than 1,100 workers died in April 2013.

BDST: 2230 HRS, MAR 15, 2015