Death toll in Bangladesh building collapse surpasses 500

PanARMENIAN.Net - More than 500 bodies have been recovered from the Bangladesh garment-factory building that collapsed last week, authorities said Friday, May 3, after arresting an engineer who warned the building was unsafe but is also accused of helping the owner add three illegal floors to the structure, The Associated Press reported.

Abdur Razzak Khan worked as the Rana Plaza owner's consultant when the owner made the illegal addition atop his five-story building, police official Ohiduzzaman said Friday. Khan was arrested Thursday on a charge of negligence.

Owner Mohammed Sohel Rana called Khan to inspect the building after it developed cracks on April 23, local media reported. That night Khan appeared on a private television station saying that after his inspection he told Rana to evacuate the building because it was not safe.

Khan, a former engineer at Jahangirnagar University near Savar, said he drew attention of the government engineers for the building to be examined further.

Police ordered the building evacuated, but witnesses say Rana told people gathered outside the next morning that the building was safe and that garment factory managers told their workers to go inside. It collapsed hours later.

The elected mayor of Savar municipality, Mohammad Refatullah, also has been suspended for alleged negligence in approving the design and layout of the doomed building, said Abu Alam, a top official of the local government ministry.

Alam said an official investigation has found that the mayor ignored rules in approving the design and layout. The mayor is from main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, and the opposition BNP has criticized the suspension as politically motivated.

The confirmed death toll reached 501 as workers continued to pull bodies from the wreckage. The building collapse was the deadliest disaster in Bangladesh's $20 billion-a-year garment industry, far surpassing a fire late last year that killed 112 workers at a garment factory that had locked doors and no fire escapes.

Workers were carefully using cranes to remove the concrete rubble Friday morning.

The official number of missing has been 149 since Wednesday, though unofficial estimates are higher.

Rana was arrested earlier and is expected to be charged with negligence, illegal construction and forcing workers to join work, which are punishable by a maximum of seven years in jail. Authorities have not said if more serious crimes will be added.

The Bangladesh High Court has ordered the government to confiscate Rana's property and freeze the assets of the owners of the factories in Rana Plaza so the money can be used to pay the salaries of their workers.