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DHAKA, Bangladesh — Inspections of Bangladesh garment factories under a new safety initiative have found cracked support beams, substandard building materials and exposed electrical cables chewed by rats.
The pact funded by mostly European fashion brands plans to check some 1,500 garment factories in Bangladesh this year.
The first round of reports released Tuesday covered just 10 factories. They were chosen to be inspected first because they had multiple floors. The Bangladesh Accord Foundation that is overseeing the safety pact said 250 more inspections will be completed by the end of March.
The safety pact was formed after a garment factory in Dhaka collapsed last year, killing more than 1,100 people. The Rana Plaza disaster highlighted unsafe conditions for many of the 4 million workers in Bangladesh's garment industry.
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