Italian auditing firm RINA has defended its actions in the wake of a garment factory fire in Karachi in 2012 where it was alleged to have ignored “fatal flaws” in factory safety systems.
The fire broke out six years ago yesterday (11 September) at the Ali Enterprises textile facility, which is said to have been certified by RINA as abiding by international labour standards just three weeks ahead of the disaster that killed 250 people.
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An international coalition of eight human rights, labour and consumer organisations has now filed a complaint against RINA to the OECD National Contact Point at the Ministry for Economic Development in Rome.
According to the Clean Clothes Campaign, the high death toll in the Ali Enterprises factory fire demonstrates that the certification process ignored major safety issues. In a digital simulation of the fire, research agency Forensic Architecture, based at Goldsmiths, University in London, showed that if the factory’s leniency on safety standards would have been identified and acted upon, hundreds of lives could have been saved.
Ben Vanpeperstraete, lobby and advocacy coordinator of Clean Clothes Campaign, says: “It is clear that RINA did a poor job by signing off on an auditing report which clearly failed to identify crucial safety risks and lulled the factory owners and the commissioners of the audit into a false sense of safety. RINA should have noticed the many risks at the factory and used the leverage of the SA 8000 certification to make sure the factory made improvements before it was certified.”
It is alleged RINA did not visit the factory. In addition, its Pakistani subsidiary, RI&CA also did not visit the factory.
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By GlobalData“This subcontractor’s audit failed to notice a range of infractions on the international standards it was upholding (SA 8000) and Pakistani safety standards regulations that would prove fatal, including an illegally constructed floor, and defunct fire alarm system, as well as the presence of child labour and structural excessive overtime. The auditing report even falsely claimed the presence of multiple, safe and freely available emergency routes and sufficient firefighting materials, whereas in reality doors were locked, routes were blocked and the only available fire extinguisher did not work,” reads the release.
Alessandro Mostaccio, general secretary of co-complainant Movimento Consumatori adds: “The SA 8000 certification constitutes a guarantee for consumers worldwide to buy safe products. By certifying Ali Enterprises, RINA provided a misleading guarantee to consumers, putting a heavy shadow on the credibility of the whole certification system and its capacity to contribute to a safer and fairer industry. This violates the consumer’s fundamental right to safe products, as contemplated in the Italian Consumer Code, Art.2”
The complaint made to the MoE, urges RINA to publish the audit report of Ali Enterprises to ensure a more transparent audit procedure in the future.
Furthermore, the complaint addresses two general flaws of the auditing system, urging that audits should take into account the context of brands’ purchasing practices and include a payment system that avoids the current conflict of interest arising from factory audits paid by factory owners.
The complaint aims to show that the current system of audits legitimises exploitation and creates false assurances that can cost lives and that therefore fundamental change is needed, in the field of transparency, accountability to workers and liability of auditing firms.
Finally, the complaint asks that RINA also engages in the access and provision of remedy.
Deborah Lucchetti, coordinator of Campagna Abiti Puliti says: “RINA’s refusal to disclose relevant information in the name of confidentiality obligations has hampered the work of human rights advocates and external independent parties to establish the facts and speed up the remediation process. This case shows once again the need for full public transparency by removing any contractual barriers between the auditing company and its clients.”
Carolijn Terwindt of European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), which is a co-complainant of the case and is supporting Pakistani affectees in a civil claim against the main buyer of the factory, said: “RINA’s clear failure to detect and act upon safety and labour violations in the Ali Enterprises factory once more shows that the social auditing system is inherently flawed and that without transparency and accountability to workers the system is due to fail again and again.”
RINA’s response
However, in a statement to just-style, a spokesperson for RINA insisted that when it carried out the audit, which it says was two months before the fire, the company “was compliant” with the SA800 standard.
The certification of the management system is based on periodic audits and sample verifications.
“Pictures taken after the fire, together with an analysis of the company’s actions prior to the fire, would appear to show a substantial difference between the conditions at the time of the fire when compared with the conditions at the time of audit.”
RINA explains that to award the SA8000 certification, it is accredited by SAAS (Social Accountability Accreditation Services), which refers to SAI (Social Accountability International), a non-profit organisation that represents the main stakeholders of the SA8000 system. It adds that following the Karachi fire, SAAS “significantly revised the standard, fire safety in particular.”
RINA’s spokesperson explains the audit report cannot be released for legal reasons while administrative and legal investigations into the fire continue.
