Spot News, 3rd prize
Collapse of Rana Plaza
Rahul Talukder
Bangladesh Sangbad 71
Bangladesh Sangbad 71
07 May, 2013
Savar, Bangladesh
An old man sleeps among the coffins of a makeshift morgue, at a school near the collapsed Rana Plaza building.
On 24 April, an eight-story building collapsed in Savar, near the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka, killing more than 1,100 people. Rana Plaza, which housed five garment factories, had been designed with only six stories and intended for shops and offices only. Two further stories had been added, and the collapse was in part blamed on the weight and vibration of the garment factories’ heavy machinery. Rana Plaza had been briefly shut down the day before, when cracks appeared in its walls and pillars, but factory workers had been called back in, hours before the building fell. Rescue operations took nearly three weeks. Workers in Rana Plaza made clothes for popular Western brands. The disaster highlighted the hazardous conditions workers face in Bangladesh’s €16 billion garment industry, where many are paid as little as €30 a month. Only a few of the brands using the factories attended a meeting of the world’s largest retailers in Geneva, in the aftermath of the Rana Plaza collapse, and four made contributions to a compensation fund for victims and their families.
Rahul Talukder
Rahul Talukder is a documentary photographer born in Bangladesh in 1991. What started as a passion for street photography later turned into a career choice. In 2011, he joined Pa...
Through our education programs, the World Press Photo Foundation encourages diverse accounts of the world that present stories with different perspectives.
Our exhibitions showcase stories that make people stop, feel, think and act to a worldwide audience.
Our annual contest recognizes and rewards the best in photojournalism and documentary photography.