Remembering Ali Enterprises:
12 years on
Garment workers in Pakistan want safe factories. We must ensure Ali Enterprises never happens again.
Twelve years ago, on 11 September 2012, over 250 people were killed in the garment industry’s most deadly factory fire ever. The Ali Enterprises factory in Karachi, Pakistan, burned to the ground with many workers trapped inside. On this day we commemorate all workers who didn’t survive and our thoughts are with all grieving families. Our commitment is to ensure this can never happen again.
Bars on the windows, locked fire doors, and a lack of safety checks meant this building was a death trap. The fire and the high death toll were the direct result of the extreme negligence towards garment workers which spans all the way from the factory management, who let people work in a factory without functioning emergency exits, to the top of the supply chain, where brands lazily relied on faulty social auditing reports. One such report made only weeks before the fire, approved the factory as living up to international standards. Functional alarm systems and escape routes would have enabled the full workforce to flee the factory in safety. Today, we remember and pledge that we will not forget.
Ten years of campaigning by Pakistani unions and international unions brought the International Accord for Health and Safety in the Textile and Garment Industry to Pakistan in 2023, to address the issues in the many many factories in Pakistan that have similar safety issues to the Ali Enterprises site. This groundbreaking and time-tested programme will make factories safe in the supply chains of brands that sign the Pakistan programme of the Accord, through inspection, remediation processes, training and a complaints mechanism. It is important that over time this agreement covers all workers in the supply chains of signatory brands.
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Nasra Bibi, mother, lost her son in the Ali Enterprises factory fire.
Many brands heed the lessons of Ali Enterprises, yet some refuse to sign
To date 128 brands have signed the Pakistan Accord to make factories safe. This includes major brands such as H&M, Inditex, GAP, and Adidas. Yet several apparel and home textile brands with major production volumes in Pakistan continue to drag their feet, such as Levi’s, IKEA, Kontoor Brands (Lee, Wranger), Target USA, and Nike. These brands should learn the lessons from this tragedy and finally heed unions’ and labour advocate’s calls to sign the Accord.