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Region/Country: Africa

Fire and Life Safety Risk Profiling

The standards of work health and safety were brought to the forefront of the public eye after the collapse of the Rana Plaza Building in Bangladesh in April 2013. The commercial structure housed a garment factory and its collapse resulted in numerous injuries and a death toll of 1,127. In the aftermath, it called for improved working conditions and better compliance with factory safety standards.

 

The IFC Fire and Life Safety Risk Profiling (FLSRP) Project aimed to support the Better Work Programme – a partnership project of the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) – in its objective to improve labour conditions and compliance of standards by participating garment and footwear factories in developing countries. The project aided Better Work in reviewing its tools and approaches to assess and remedy fire and building safety issues in each of the countries in which it operates; ultimately to prevent or mitigate the impact of future incidents like the 2013 disaster in Bangladesh.

 

FLSRP involved the conduct of sectoral-level risk assessments on fire and building safety in garment and footwear factories to develop respective risk profiles for Cambodia, Haiti, Indonesia, Jordan, Lesotho, Nicaragua, and Vietnam. Major activities included research and desk review, benchmarking, report review, site selection and inspections, stakeholder discussions, data compilation and lessons-learnt workshops in each of the target countries.