hello i'm adrian for the good in this episode we're revisiting bangladesh where a few years ago a garment factory collapsed and killed over 1000 people working inside the magnitude of the accident laid bare the lack of safety standards for the country's government workers at the apparent indifference of the multinational corporations that profited from them. it wasn't the 1st accident to happen in that industry and sadly it's unlikely to be the last but the issues raised by this film worth airing again here it is that award winning investigation from al-jazeera as faultline series made in bangladesh. 'd last operate the last 5 for last week and pass those savings on to our customers to everyday low prices blah blah blah blah total revenue i believe every year 400000000000 dollars having low prices drives traffic to our stores and increases with little while for us to lower expenses lower prices again oh please welcome tom cruise last all around the globe wal-mart is taking the lead in making a difference to contain the american dream has become a global concept i think it's our country's best export. 2012 was a good year for wal-mart. but it was a bad year for bangladesh. it experienced the deadliest factory fire in its history 1 march shorts were among the clothes found in the charred remains but the company escaped accountability. and for many western retailers whose clothes are made in bangladesh it's business as usual. anybody out there know how many zeros are half a trillion dollars taken from a number there along. with the fire that has ring fashions factory last november started on the ground floor and quickly spread. at least 112 people died hundreds of others were injured many workers were trapped inside because the doors were locked and the building had no fire exits. the remains of the fire are still everywhere here this is where workers jumped out of the burning building onto the roof of the storm and tory there's boards in all the windows who are going to kick out of the exhaust fans and jump onto this building. on ricky a big daughter you know who died in the fire. last over the build up a little bit in a minute it was it would provoke with. you haven't received any compensation for your daughter's death in the bush where would i meet you but with a limited to begin with a little. many of the women who escaped the fire still live in the shadow of the factory. mukhtar bondo is one of them. she says she was sewing the wal-mart shorts when the fire broke out look good in them through hard put in this hell and this is a lot of deliver that is better put in money and lots of it well i did to. their car and give the money. but i found that if they were then good there but i can get on my list said minister. so how did you escape put the electricians on the love and this is what it landed full up until a ship full of animal how did it i never did notice it can you describe what you were working on them taught them to learn these are the ones you're working on a hand. when word got out that we were visiting other survivors came to share their stories so you. to the hemming along the zipper and the belt about you none of the women received any compensation from wal-mart so you hang them packed up and they all vowed to never work at a garment factory again do you know who these pair of shorts were for were not ready for. 5 months after the fire yet another disaster in bangladesh captured the world's attention. rana plaza an 8 story building housing several garment factories collapsed more than a 1000 people died. even though the scale of the collapse eclipsed the fire the fundamental questions raised by ties remain where the same. how could tragedies like this happen and who ultimately should be held responsible. before we arrived in bangladesh we deceived internal documents related to the wal-mart short order. the paper trail gives us an inside look into the complicated way that wal-mart produces its clothing. the wal-mart there is high in the air and also the most ruthless practitioner of a sourcing model that has now come to dominate the apparel industry it's a system that can shield the company from blame when disaster strikes remarks acquired chain is defined by 2 critical features the tremendous pressure wal-mart puts on its suppliers and its contract factories overseas to slash production costs with walmart knows those factories will do by ignoring the rights and safety of workers and then secondly the utilization of multiple layers of agents and contractors so that wal-mart can distance itself from responsibility for the inevitable consequences of those sourcing practices. simcoe is a mid-sized garment factory in a neighborhood crowded with the. at its height it had 1500 workers. today there are 600. simcoe is where the shorts were supposed to have been made. while mark placed the order with a new york based supplier called success apparel. success apparel then filled it with simple with help from a local buying agent cultural colors so this is from success apparel contract. this is the. prize to do targeted cars and which is like $300.00 and. more were just mention that this is a wal-mart. except if you assume you never. gives you the faded glory. faded glory is wal-mart's main in-house clothing line and it was that brand of shorts that was found in the ashes of the dream factory fire. simcoe says it couldn't handle the order after dozens of workers who left town during the muslim holiday of eve didn't return on time so already we were overbooked and we were over our capacity and from the don't have the workers to fill fruitful field orders on time kevin taxing the c.e.o. of success or pearls he visited us and he was like going through our facilities all the production of you know use of 4 letter words etc and then he was like and we told him like you know we're having like trouble meeting the deadline you know we need some extensions we need some help he was very upset he said not a single day extension they're going to. find us upcountry you know so the wal-mart supply this direct supplier to wal-mart came here and told you to stop communists yes. sub contracting means paying another factory to take on some of the work. simcoe was already stretched and dealing. with the shorts then it was hit with yet another massive order and then we got this other document from public clothing company and that's another wal-mart supplier. and they've sent a purchase order for almost 300000 shorts yes another set of shorts august 7th august 17th 3 days later. he simcoe can make around 300000 garments a month. put together the 2 wal-mart orders will more than double its capacity. to use the logic was the place the order and some of the factory will fulfill it somehow the factual fulfill it what is that code for that's code for it yes you do so contracting it you give it to other lines other production lines to fulfill daughter did wal-mart know about your production capacity here yes wal-mart does a 3rd party audit so the auditors come in they count your machines so you they know exactly how many garments you can produce on average on the line given what happened into his dream some have asked why simcoe didn't simply refuse the 2nd wal-mart order factories in place like bang with that are gauged in cutthroat competition with competitors in bangladesh and around the world so it's practically impossible to turn down a major order from wal-mart because that is the factories lively. so to meet 1 march deadline simcoe subcontracted a small part of the success apparel order to a manufacturer called tuba. tuber then sent the shorts to its dream factory a few weeks later the factory caught fire. oh my god. when really. when really you know are good that happened. i don't know. and my god given me you know i said look over in the back you know. caught fire you got smashed you know is what i have reviewed the factories. why didn't send someone to get our things out. success apparel accuse simcoe of subcontracting the order without their knowledge and wal-mart blamed their supplier success but simcoe insists that success knew about dream and that wal-mart also would have known because its own database retailing require suppliers to identify where orders are being filled retailing is supposed to have a record of everything actually authorized to produce wal-mart goods every factory engage in the production of all markets in may 1 mark named over 240 factories it would no longer work with it saying it had a 0 tolerance policy for an authorized sub contracting simple was one of them. if there was no shorts one person than business would have gone on as usual. it's like everybody knows what's going on it's an open secret but getting caught on camera is or. i think in the act then you have to disown everything and say i didn't know anything about it there dude is the practice of the wal-mart to hide you know one more direct contact so you have this upload with the vendor and every fact you seem by all of this on top contractors there everybody. facing a scandal wal-mart refused to accept the shorts or to pay the bill even after some of the order had already been shipped and this is are entirely abandoned for out $1200000.00 simcoe says it's nearly bankrupt so all of the shorts were made in these production lines and i really feel bad when i don't see our workers in the of production lines you know and all these machines are now empty after the 1000 fire wal-mart announced a drop success apparel as a supplier. we tried to speak to successes representative in bangladesh but we found the company had closed down its office here. we also tried to interview the company c.e.o. goodman in new york but she refused to speak with us. kevin taxon who was successes president at the time of the fire also refused to speak to us on camera he now heads up another supplier called america group one of its clients is wal-mart if wal-mart were really so upset about what success apparel did one assumes they would not be keen to continue to do business with a leading executive from success apparel. on the phone kevin told us that neither success nords agent in bangladesh true colors knew about the subcontractor. but we managed to track down true colors last remaining employee in taka. if there's any such contracting would you be aware of that yeah and then what do you do with that information do you pass it out. we've also talked to our importers can you read this email from me and tell me who it's from ok it's saying. the shocking mills. last evening it just went to 6 and what's the subject. call. sub con is industry speak for subcontractor. that email was sent by a manager true colors shortly after the fire so despite successes denials their own agent may have been aware of the sub contract. where on the trail investigating how wal-mart's supply chain works here in bangladesh does the company know when its orders are being subcontracted. is the way they source their clothing the system itself flawed. the garment industry is notoriously secretive so we needed an insider we're on our way to meet an auditor who was hired by wal-mart to assess standards of some of its factories it's very rare for auditors to speak on the record and he doesn't want to speak to us on camera so we recorded the conversation secretly. in bangladesh government regulation of garment factories is lax and international companies are not legally required to ensure working conditions are safe. some companies hire auditors to inspect the factories if you're going to. also. be in the area. that. you were right there in your daughter not that they're trying. to get. back. what do you think of their system. and. what why is it better what's the danger in moving in the. past. have. to. do. with the nightmare. return to the land. from what. are saying it sounds like wal-mart's supply chain was so out of control that there could be more testing one. bad one. doesn't know where its goods are being produced it's because they choose not to know this is a company whose success is built 1st and foremost on the extraordinary level of control they exert over production in their global supply chain wal-mart refused to give us any information about its supply chain but a spokesperson told us wal-mart relies on its suppliers to implement the company's standards. there's a reason bangladesh is so popular with companies especially those that produce inexpensive clothes that need to be made quickly. so the rock bottom cheapest place in the world to make apparel it's cheap because it has the lowest minimum wage for apparel workers of any country in the world at $0.18 an hour. that's about $38.00 a month. but it goes both ways. garments are just as important to bangladesh accounting for 80 percent of its exports and giving jobs to 4000000 people mostly poor women. that gives the industry enormous leverage inside the country so what the buddha retailers and by us come here to look for a cheaper subclass so that here it is a buyers market everybody should everybody take. a share of the cake so these are. for money that we have 5 to 6 years but there are. many and. with these lists what dating all this might. it's not just the multinationals. in bangladesh everyone wants a shot at making it in the garment industry i'm headed to a small factory just finishing the garments they're supposed to be finishing garments for wal-mart and posing as a buyer to get in there. for those who can't open large factories there's always business in sub contracting. even if it means putting the finishing touches and garments before they're shipped out. to make anything that ends up in wal-mart. you made products that go to wal-mart. and well i thought that one of the there's a little bit of that. where you were an authorized wal-mart sub contractor for that order to get out there and live out of them and a lot of the marketing one of the good. so is this very common that a lot of factories subcontract for big labels like wal-mart without authorization to go through the. issue but if you have a. little bit a little bit but the minute. i've been on. your 14. so you started working when you were 13 years old. so what's the average age of your workers. who where are all the these all. of those little better. but we just spoke to a girl who said she's 14. wal-mart told us they don't tolerate child labor and their supply chain and they're investigating whether this finishing center did any work on wal-mart products. once we found one finishing house it wasn't hard to find others. what do you. how many buttons do you put on every day or. how old are you yet. how long have you been working here is it. it is. really how old are. she would you go to school i don't know how much money. is other than. a little. $2500.00 talk is just $32.00 a month she we're putting the last band into old neighbor campus lately and that is that it is a special this is what i was going to. you are coming only journal. says old navy. old navy is owned by gap inc one of the largest clothing companies in the world. this is where a lot of america's clothes come from and it's a reality many companies don't want us to see this is one of very many sub contracting factories at the bottom of the supply chain and bond with ish seems completely unregulated completely on authorized there's no fire extinguisher no fire exit it's just a shack in someone's backyard. this morning we went to a finishing house and they had about 20 workers there more than half of them were under 14 there were girls as young as 12 making clothes for gap who really in a finishing section body one 0 my gosh. oh my gosh. i mean for me. just so i just come believe so this is the time. that gap showed a step forward to make this cut. oh my gosh so see there how critical is the supply chain ease how critical these. get declined to give us an on camera interview they did give us a statement though saying the products we found were quote either counterfeit or improperly acquired. through the bar codes on the tags we found at the finishing house we were able to match the garments to ones at old navy stores in the u.s. . the gap added that it quote strictly prohibits any vendor from employing underage workers. there is a fairy tale that major brands and retailers like ap and wal-mart tell to the public in this fairy tale gap and wal-mart are companies that are socially responsible and deeply committed to protecting the rights of workers and making every effort to inspect their factories and ensure that everything is on the up and that fairytale has very little to do with the reality of the supply chain for wal-mart for gap and worker rights issues are not a moral issue they're an issue of reputational risk and wal-mart and gap understand that their image in the eyes of the public has a very large impact on the degree to which they can get people to come to their stores and buy their goods and so to the extent that they can be convinced that their image will be damaged if they don't do the right thing for workers then they will make change. after a workers' rights activist who is still haunted by what she saw that day. is a feeling that when you were in the inside the building you can feel that how these workers forced to remove this window of a bar there just from bar 2 and then jumped my feeling was like nothing can be worse than these not can be worse than these like seeing these people burned to ass and their family crying. in front of you and they cannot find i mean they can to identify these bodies whether it is their beloved or not. nobody think about this these human faeces who are making clothes for them and dying in these factories. nobody talking about their compensation nobody talking about their wages that think killing. even i would say even they don't even consider them to human. but they are really human they have needs now have a voice they wanted to speak out they have right to have a simple things. 'd to him. to have the certain looks positive in terms of safety and security the body is set up by the international buyers as well as with the local bank or those governments benefactor association is to ensure the safety and security of the workers for us now the accord and alliance have set up certain benchmarks standard which is now followed the bank of those governments manufacture the export of association is following up with those benchmarks that set up their own body which is probably the ready made garments sustainability council which will ensure the same benchmark and their interpreter themselves in the garment sector set up a over $1000000000.00 fund to ensure the safety and security for the workers. playing. the exclusive undercover report that captured a peaceful protest ruthlessly put down by. the military they seem to be testing the ministry the standing over there with their guns ready this seems as if the start of the crackdown there being. 'd no matter maybe 10 years on what has changed rewind inside me in ma the crackdown on al-jazeera. in japan thousands of men and women of banishing without a trace when i want to use investigates why people engineer their own disappearance and. how to 0. the world health organization says so corona virus is not a pandemic as china admits shortcomings in its response to the outbreak. though you're watching al-jazeera live from doha with me fully back to also ahead the race to make a democratic presidential nominee in the u.s. gets off to a chaotic start in iowa. celebrations in malawi as the top court counsels the results of the presidential election paving the way for a new folks air pollution in the elite is basically resulting in a bubbly basis. and a call for action from president says one of the world.