Clean Clothes Campaign's open letter to RINA re. Italian NCP recommendations
[English translation by Campagna Abiti Puliti of “Lettera aperta a RINA”, 3 June 2021 at https://www.abitipuliti.org/azioni-urgenti/ali-enteprises-pakistan/lettera-aperta-a-rina/]
Genoa, June 3rd 2021
We are publishing this open letter to RINA SPA after having tried in vain to establish a fruitful contact with the company at the end of the negotiated mediation procedure before the OSCE National Contact Point, which ended without reaching an agreement.
The Clean Clothes Campaign with Italian association Movimento Consumatori, along with the International Office of the Clean Clothes Campaign, the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, the Ali Enterprises Factory Fire Affectees Association, the Pakistan National Trade Union Federation and the Pakistan Institute for Labour Education and Research, had filed a complaint before the OECD National Contact Point on 11 September 2018 aimed at affirming RINA's responsibility in the matter of the fire that broke out at the Ali Enterprise factory in Pakistan in 2012 in which 250 people lost their lives. RINA, by issuing the SA8000 certificate three weeks before the fire, had guaranteed that the factory was safe. The German brand Kik was forced to pay compensation to the victims after an intense international lobbying campaign, but in our opinion the auditor RINA also had a clear responsibility, because it should have detected and used the audit process to have the serious safety violations in the building repaired (from the accumulation of flammable materials, to the unpermitted and unlawful wooden mezzanine floor clearly visible at the entrance to Block 1, to the inadequate and inoperative sprinkler system, to the lack of adequate emergency exits and stairs, to name but a few). An excellent reconstruction of the facts has been produced through a digital simulation by Forensic Architecture, an independent research agency based at Goldsmiths University in London and is available here.
We have asked RINA to show us the audit reports which certified the Ali Enterprise factory as safe, but RINA refused.
We have asked RINA to take responsibility for admitting its mistake in granting SA8000 certification to Ali Enterprise, a mistake which proved fatal to 250 people, but RINA refused.
We have demanded that RINA contributed to financial compensation for the families of the fire victims, as its client Kik did, but RINA refused ...