(1 May 2013) SHOTLIST
1. Wide of protesters on streets of Dhaka
2. Various of protesters chanting
3. Mid protesters and placard showing victims of building collapse
4. Protester with placard reading: (English) Female workers are the Heart of Garments Industry"
5. Rear shot of protesters
6. Wide top shot of protesters
7. Wide of banners carried by protesters
8. Mid of protesters
9. Various of protesters
10. Protester in street wearing chains
11. Mid of women protesters
12. SOUNDBITE: (Bangla) Nazma Akhtar, leader of a garment workers' union
"We demand wages to earn our livelihood. With the wages they give us it is very difficult to live. On May Day, we also demand full compensation from the factory owners who are killing the workers."
13. Mid of women protesters chanting slogans and demanding death penalty for the building owner
STORYLINE:
Thousands of workers paraded through central Dhaka on Wednesday, using May Day to press home demands for safety at work and for the death penalty for the owner of a garment factory building that collapsed last week in the country's worst industrial disaster.
At least 386 people were killed and 2500 more injured last Wednesday, April 24, when the building in the Savar suburb of Dhaka collapsed.
A raucous procession of workers on foot, pickup trucks and motorcycles wound its way through central Dhaka on Wednesday.
They waved the national flag and banners, beat drums and chanted slogans calling for the building owner to face the death penalty.
May Day protests, customarily an opportunity for workers in this impoverished South Asian nation to vent their grievances, has taken on a poignant significance this year following last week's disaster, when the illegally constructed 8-story Rana Plaza collapsed, bringing down with it five garment factories.
Garment workers' union leader Nazma Akhtar, leader said protesters were demanding "full compensation from the factory owners who are killing the workers."
The disaster was the deadliest to hit Bangladesh's garment industry, which is worth 20 (b) billion US dollars annually and supplies global retailers, surpassing a fire in a clothes factory in November when 112 people were killed.
The owner of the building, Mohammed Sohel Rana, is being questioned by police while under arrest.
He is expected to be charged with negligence, illegal construction and forcing workers to join work, which is 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 to freeze the assets of the owners of the factories in Rana Plaza so that the money can be used to pay the salaries of their workers.
Rana had permission to build five stories but added three more floors illegally.
When huge cracks appeared in the building a day before its collapse, he told tenants that it was perfectly safe and they should go back in.
The next day, a bank and some shops refused to occupy the premises but factory managers told their workers to go back in.
A couple of hours later the building came down in a heap of concrete and bricks.
Some 2,500 people escaped with injuries and rescue workers have recovered 386 bodies but believe that many more are still buried on the ground level.
The garment-factory fire in November brought widespread pledges to improve worker-safety standards in Bangladesh. But since then, very little has changed.
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