KARACHI - The Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research has expressed profound grief and sorrow over the deaths of 120 workers in a garment factory in Bangladesh and offered its condolences to the relatives of the deceased.In a statement here on Tuesday, Piler condemned industrial incidents and the unnecessary loss of human lives, which occur due to lack of occupational health and safety measures at work places. The Tazreen Fashion Limited Bangladesh clothing factory is a multistoried building in which workers were trapped by the fire due to the lack of emergency exits as all three staircases down to the ground floor were closed. Numerous workers lost their lives when they tried to escape through the windows and hit the ground. A similar type of incident happened in Pakistan recently, which caused the deaths of an estimated 300 industrial workers in a garment factory in Karachi.The Bangladesh factory, which was opened in 2009 and employed 1700 workers, is the subsidiary of the Tuba group which makes products for WalMart, KIK, Carrefour and IKEA.A statement by PILER claimed that employers have a legal compulsion to provide a safe and secure working environment to all its workers. Bangladesh is the second largest exporter in the world’s garment industry where around 4,000 garment factories earn 20 billion dollars through exports. A large number of these factories run their enterprises without proper occupational health and safety measures. Since 2006, more than 500 workers have lost their lives in different industrial accidents in Bangladesh. Moreover, the Bangladeshi governament has failed to ratify the ILO’s Occupational Health and Safety Convention No. 155.PILER pointed out that the recent fire incident is a result of the continuing negligence of occupational health and safety rules and existing labour laws and demanded the Bangladeshi government to implement these measure informal as well as informal industrial sectors immediately.PILER suggested that it is the right time for the government of Bangladesh to ratify ILOConvention 155 will provide the baseline to address the issue of occupational health and safety at the industrial and enterprise level.Meanwhile, on the orders of Sindh High Court, the Sindh Health Department is preparing case of doctors of General/Specialist/Dental cadre for their promotions to next scales for which ACRs of doctors due for promotion are immediately required to the health department. In this regard, all the doctors who are due for promotion to next scale as per their seniority in respect cadre/scale are directed to submit their Annual Confidential Report/Performance Evaluation Reports duly filled in to their immediate bosses for onward submission to Health Department. The cases of promotion will be considered by the concerned DPC/Selection Boards in near future and the doctors in their own interest are directed to complete their pending ACRs/PERs.