Transcripts For BBCNEWS Our World 20201106

Now on bbc news, our world. 24,000 2a,000 coronavirus cases were reported in the last 2a hour period. We have been looking at the scale of infection. Staff facing a sudden rush of patients with covid 19. They have more cases now than at the peak earlier this year. A patent already emergent in a few other hospitals. What is the latest picture across the uk . This map shows when numbers of infections are highest. In Northern England and parts of wales, Northern Ireland and scotland. The most up to date figures for hospital vision show increases in every english region, some clusters than others. This is not really speculation, this is a fact and we know that, in certain parts of the country, the number of coronavirus patient is significantly over the number they were having to cope with during the aprilfirst they were having to cope with during the april first peak thatis during the april first peak that is not everywhere, fortu nately. That is not everywhere, fortunately. Parts of the country coronavirus is rising but nevertheless hospitals are coping well. What exactly is the aim of the new restrictions . It is to keep the virus under control. The less people get together, the fewer chances there are of infection. A key indicator is what it called the r number, how much the virus is being spread. Anyone infected was passing the virus to free others. 0ne anyone infected was passing the virus to free others. One is the critical threshold because we love it, the epidemic slows down rather than speeds up. Right now, we are up to 1. 3 and the hope is all the different restrictions around the uk will bring that write down again. So what is next in the coming weeks . According to one study based on an app, infections have started to drop slightly. Possibly because of the restrictions under the tear system. We are seeing nationally high levels of new difficulties but it is not going up and in many cases it is starting to come down but the lack of two weeks between the lack of two weeks between the new cases and hospitals means this will not be seen to get in the nhs. Underpinning everything is knowing where the virus is. Liverpool will be the first entire city to be tested. The army is ready to help but the system for reaching the contacts the system for reaching the co nta cts of the system for reaching the contacts of anyone positive are a crucial part of the strategy and it is still not working properly. The next four weeks area properly. The next four weeks are a vital chance to get that right. Now on bbc news, our world. Has coronavirus changed the way we buy clothes forever . And what about those who are being left behind . Bangladesh is one of the worlds most incredible economic success stories. At the heart of the countrys economic boom is the Garment Industry. The First Factory opened in the 1970s and now its a 30 billion industry. Barton, arcadia groups, tesco, river island. Almost everybody has visited in my showroom. There are almost 5,000 garment factories in bangladesh, employing mostly women. But could the coronavirus erase decades of progress in a matter of months . You see all this is justjeans. And those made for the uk high street. Theyjust keep here like that. How many days i can keep the jeans like that . Where i have the space . Factories shut down, leaving thousands of people out of work. Chanting. And worried about how they will survive. Bangladesh is the second largest manufacturer of ready made garments in the world. This industry employs 4 Million People in the country. 85 of them are women. The southern port city of chittagong. Most of the clothing in these factories is made forfast fashion brands in america and europe. Its all about huge volumes and quick turnaround times. Mostafiz uddin is the owner of denim expert. This is pepejeans london. He employs 2,000 workers, making jeans for Big International brands. When he built the factory 11 years ago, mostafiz focused on creating a safe working environment. He wanted to put bangladesh on the map as a sustainable place to do business. In the past, safety issues were rampant in garment factories. Building regulations were disregarded in construction. Long working hours in cramped and hazardous factories were common. These unsafe working practices were brought to the worlds attention in 2013. The eight storey rana plaza complex collapsed in the capital dhaka. 1,131; people were killed. Did you go to rana plaza when it happened . Immediately it was 11. 00, 11. 30, i think, Something Like that. I just took my shuttle and i ran away and i went to the rana plaza area and i see the things that are going on, ifeel so much helpless that i had really not things to do, no things to offer. From there, i decided, 0k, that is the time i really start to how can i do good for people . How can i change peoples perceptions . How can another rana plaza not happen . You really can see what im doing the last 20 years. If you check through my e mails the last 20 years, you will see every single day i work up through night 3am. He lives with his wife and son in chittagong. I am seeing him after. Many days. He has dozens of clients from all around the world. Many come to visit him in his factory showroom. Like this from the marshall, us ambassador, from the danish ambassador. Clients who buyjeans from him include famous fashion brands. And whos visited your lab . Almost every high street retailer you can think of visited over here like, at the moment boohoo, barton, topshop and then arcadia groups, tesco, river island. Almost everybody have been visited in my showroom and they all had been written their comments over here, and they are all very happy. But things have changed dramatically since the coronavirus pandemic hit. On 9th of march, the first three cases of coronavirus were announced in dhaka. n0 audio translation available on the 26th of march, the government ordered all factories to lock down. Millions of workers were sent home, with no idea when they would return to work. Hosna and her husband both lost their jobs in garment factories. They live on the outskirts of dhaka in the tongi slum. They share one room with their baby, shareen, and aktars mother. His mother also lost herjob in the Garment Industry when the factories closed. Social distancing here is a challenge. One stove is shared amongst 20 families. There are six toilets and one communal washing area. The minimum wage for a garment worker in bangladesh is £74 a month. Hosna and her family all worked overtime and earned nearly £275 a month between them. One month into the lockdown, hosna was called back into work. But on the 3rd ofjune, she was laid off and given just 5,000 taka, around £45, in compensation. In chittagong, 17 days into the pandemic, mostafiz had to close his factory. He was receiving e mails from buyers cancelling their orders. Many of the jeans had already been made and were ready to be dispatched. Some had already been shipped. But some customers were saying they were no longer responsible for the payment of their order or were putting payment off indefinitely. When the pandemic hit, around 3 billion of orders were cancelled in bangladeshs Garment Industry. You see all this is justjeans. And those were all made for the uk high street. Theyjust keep here like that. How many days i can keep the jeans like that . Where i have this space . You can see by yourself there is no space everywhere, everywhere, everywhere you can see. There is no space and it is not also safe for the working condition mostafiz pays for all materials to make the jeans upfront. He borrows money from the bank for the denim and his workers wages. He generally receives payment on delivery of the goods, not in advance. You can see all of these fabrics are from pakistan, china, india, turkey. And all these fabrics we bought from our manufacturing partners, oursuppliers, and they trusted us, they have produced these fabrics when we say to them to do itjust like as we trusted to our buyers and all these people. The same thing, our high street suppliers also trusted us and then we produce and then we ship. Now, if you just look into all these fabrics, these are all 1, these are all here around 5 6 million of fabrics in this warehouse, and all the fabric, we borrowed the money from the bank and we purchase this because we trusted our clients and told them we would finish them. But they simply cancelled them. As i say, they dont want them. One of the companies that cancelled a large order was uk high street retailer peacocks. In total, they peacocks cancelled a contract for 113,600 pairs ofjeans, worth over £162,000. In an e mail to mostafiz, the company said it was cancelling payments for all stock already made, and stock that had already shipped to its warehouse. 15,100 pairs had already been made and were ready to ship. Another 111,500 jeans had had the material bought for them. We tried to contact them to ask why they havent paid for their orders, but have received no reply. Its parent company, edinburgh woollen mill, has recently filed for administration, putting up to 211,000 jobs at risk in the uk. We work on trust and faith and belief. Our business is like that. Everybody in this industry works like that. What we were supposed be producing in march, we had not ordered in february, we ordered that in december. And then the vessel ships from different parts of the world china, turkey, all of these places. So when the pandemic starts and everything shuts down, even that time, the content starts to come and then it starts to pile up. Mostafiz is paying 2,000 a day to keep fabrics he has already ordered but cant store in his factory at the port. Containers after containers starts to come in because we ordered the fabrics and Raw Materials two or three months before. I am not understanding what to do with the responsibility of 2,000 people. My priority is feeding the families, feeding the workers, not the priority to clear the goods for the port. It is not the priority at that time. It is not the buyer who did that commit millions of dollars of goods stuck on the port. But how can i save my worker . How can i keep them alive . In dhaka, with no income, hosna took on the onlyjob she could find chopping nuts for a local shop. This earns herjust £1 a day. Her husband has not found work, so looks after their daughter. His mother helena is now the familys main breadwinner, working fourjobs a day cleaning houses. In april, thousands of workers joined protests outside factories, demanding to be paid. But they were unsuccessful. Mostafiz received some support from the government in the form of low interest loans to help cover salaries. It was not enough to cover all his costs. He took drastic action to keep paying his workers. I sold my property all the property. Even the house where you are sitting now, that house was sold. This one also. This is my only house. Last month. She sold all her jewelleries and gold. And keep on paying to the people. So, we are poor, actually. For a fortnight, he did not sleep. He was under so much pressure, how we can do this. He did not sleep. After 3 4 days, he asked me i felt a pain in my chest. At times, things were very difficult. This is the street this is where i used to say hi to everybody. I would stand here and thought about just jump from here. Suicide. Thats what i used to think. I mean, people will think i am a coward. Mostafizs factory reopened after one month. Six months on, some buyers have now agreed to pay for orders theyd cancelled. Many are still insisting on a discounted rate. Mostafiz has taken on deep debts. I am suffering, i am a part of the suffering, but it is not that i am the only person suffering. We are suffering, the group of manufacturers are suffering because it is not happen only in bangladesh. The situation, what has happened with me, maybe i am one person or i am one single country, but it is the same in all the production countries. If you go to india, if you go to pakistan or other countries, they also have the same situation as an industry and as a community, we should make some kind of safety net where our workers are safe and secure. They should not have suffered the way how they suffered during the pandemic times. For decades, the fast fashion industry has relied on cheap labour from countries like bangladesh. And for the millions of people like hosna, work in garment factories has provided a better standard of living. Imports of clothing to america were down 49 from april tojune, and in the eu, they were down by 45 . Recent studies showed for every ten workers laid off in bangladesh in the pandemic, only one has returned to work. Hello there. It looks like the weather should even out a bit more i think for friday, certainly compared with thursday, where we had the win lowing over the pennines, bringing some sunshine in durham and temperatures reaching 18 degrees. Whereas across southern parts of england, when that fog formed, it lingered into the afternoon in some places and temperatures only eight or nine celsius. Now, its quite chilly early in the morning across more southern areas of the uk. Where we have the clearer skies, a pinch of frost. Further north, there is more cloud around. But where we have those clearer skies in england and wales, theres some mist and fog, particularly towards the west country and the south east of wales in the morning. Itll lift fairly readily, mind you, as the breeze picks up and we get sunshine developing widely. And that cloud, quite low cloud, moving northwards across scotland and Northern Ireland and some sunshine coming in here as well. The winds picking up in the south west through the day. Temperatures not quite as high as they were on thursday, notjust to the east of the pennines but also in the north east of scotland. But over the weekend, were going to find milder air gradually coming in from the south on a southerly breeze. And whilst its dry for many, there could be a bit of rain around, especially on sunday. But we start the weekend this time with the colder air and the lower temperatures across more Northern Areas of the uk, with the clearer skies. Thats going to lead to some fog, particularly across the veil of york and perhaps in the central belt. That could linger into the afternoon as well. Otherwise, we get some sunshine in the north away from that fog. Further south, through wales, the midlands, southern england, it could be quite grey and cloudy through the day. A bit of rain in the far south west later. But temperatures are beginning to recover across southern areas. Where we have the fog lingering further north, though, it will be quite chilly. Second half of the weekend, weve got lowering pressure to the south west of the uk, southerly breeze. These weather fronts pretty weak, mind you are moving their way northwards. So it looks like theres a fair bit of cloud at least on sunday. There could be some patchy rain here and there, most of it i think running up through the irish sea towards Northern Ireland, and later on into the south west of scotland. Many places are still going to be dry and those temperatures making double figures through the central belt of scotland, and again 16 degrees towards the south east of england. Those temperatures remain at those sort of levels, really, i think through monday and tuesday into next week. Weve got some wetter weather on monday. Nut it should be dry but still fairly cloudy, 00 29 16,393 4294966103 13 29,430 i think, on tuesday