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Thousands of people, some wearing funeral shrouds, staged demonstrations at the site of the Rana Plaza factory complex on Thursday on the one-year anniversary of the Bangladesh disaster that claimed 1,138 lives.
The demonstrators – who included injured survivors and the families of the deceased – marched to the ruins of the nine-storey building carrying flowers and chanting slogans including "We want compensation!" and "Death to Sohel Rana!", the owner of the building.
Relatives of the 140 workers still unaccounted for also joined in, calling on the government to help find their bodies. They included toddlers holding photos of their missing mothers.
"I want my daughter's dead body. At least it would give us some consolation," said Minu Begum, clutching the photo of her missing daughter, Sumi Begum, who worked at one of Rana Plaza's five factories.
For the first time since the disaster, when the site was sealed off, relatives of the dead and survivors were allowed inside. Some fell to the ground, sobbing and grabbing handfuls of dirt.
Protests also erupted in Dhaka, with several hundred people shouting slogans and holding banners outside the head office of the organisation that represents local garment manufacturers.
Families are angry at local authorities for the slow progress in identifying workers who are still missing, while the owner of the building has yet to be charged by police.
"One year after Rana Plaza collapsed, far too many victims and their families are at serious risk of destitution," said Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch.
Global labour and rights groups marked the day by criticising the western retailers linked to the disaster, which include Spanish brand Mango, Italian brand Benetton and French retailer Auchan.
A woman holds a picture of her relative, a garment worker who went missing in the Rana Plaza collapse. Photograph: Andrew Biraj/Reuters
"Brands are failing workers a second time," Ineke Zeldenrust, from the Amsterdam-based Clean Clothes Campaign, said.
"First they failed to ensure the factories they bought from were safe and now they are failing the survivors and the families of those who lost loved ones."
After the disaster western brands launched safety inspections and pushed Bangladesh's government to increase wages and ensure the better enforcement of regulations.
But trade union group IndustriALL criticised retailers this week for making "woefully inadequate" contributions to a proposed $40m (£24m) fund set up to compensate the families of the dead and the injured.
Of the 29 western brands who sourced clothes from Rana Plaza factories, about half have deposited $15m into the fund, the Clean Clothes Campaign said. The first payments of $640 for each of the survivors and families of the deceased were only made this week.
British retailer Primark has made the largest contribution of $7m.
After the backlash, nearly 200 brands formed two umbrella groups to organise a cleanup of Bangladesh's 3,500 garment factories, which form a $22bn industry second only to China's in size. They reject criticism that they have done too little.
"Our members alone paid $2.2m into the trust fund," said Mesbah Rabin, managing director of the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, which includes US retailers Walmart, Gap and Target.
"The brands are also paying for the costly inspection of the garment factories, which will eventually raise safety standards, boost export potential and improve Bangladesh's brand image that the country is a safe destination for sourcing apparel," he said.
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