After two months of agonising wait, the family members of 11 victims of Tazreen fire could finally find a sense of closure as they paid respect to their loved ones at Jurain graveyard in the capital yesterday.
A day after DNA tests confirmed the identities of the 11 victims, their family members spotted the graves of the ill-fated garment workers, whose bodies were burnt beyond recognition in the country's worst industrial blaze.
Kabir Hossain sat in front of the grave of his wife, Lucky Begum, telling her resting soul how much he and his six-year-old son missed her. Sprinkling water on her grave, he muttered, “He [the boy] cries for you all the time...”
Abdul Malek, whose wife perished in the fire leaving behind three children, said, “My youngest daughter, who is only 5-year-old, keeps asking me where her mother is. I fail to give her any answer.”
The relatives of the victims said they had gone from one place to another for the last two months with a hope that the bodies of their loved ones would be identified. But none could offer them any help.
“When we went to the BGMEA, they told us to go to the deputy commissioner's office. But the officials at the DC office said they could not offer us any help. Then we went to the medical [Dhaka Medical College and Hospital], they said none from the BGMEA had asked for DNA report,” said Kamal Uddin.
They said it had been hard for them to wait for the news that the bodies were finally identified. Many of them had to spend days in the capital, leaving behind their jobs and children back home. But for the family members of two other victims, the wait is far from over as the bodies of their dear ones are yet to be identified.
While others prayed in front of the graves, Motin sat in a corner, stone-faced, unable to process the fact that his sister's body was not among the 53 corpses buried there.
“How could she just disappear?” he cried, over and over again, clutching his sister's voter ID in one hand. “How can they just say she cannot be found anywhere?”
Abdul Jabbar, too, was devastated realising that the mother of his 18-month-old son was not there.
“Where do we go now?” he asked.
The relatives said none from the BGMEA or the government had contacted them. Garments Workers Unity Forum, Activists-Anthropologists and Garments Sramik Shonghoti had helped them identify the graves.
Saydia Gulrukh, a member of Activists-Anthropologists, a platform of anthropologists who have closely followed the workers' plight since the Tazreen incident, suspected some anomalies in the report.
Referring to fire victim Fatema Akhtar, whose body could not be identified, she said Fatema's husband had provided his blood sample on the 24th of this month while the report was finalised on the 28th.
“Are we to believe that they completed the DNA profiling process in three days when they have been consistently telling us what a lengthy process it is?” she argued.
The relatives say they now have only one plea to the authorities, and that is to make arrangements for burying the bodies in their ancestral homes.
Wednesday 30 January 2013
http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=267193
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