The Walt Disney Company said that it will cease production of clothes and other merchandise in ‘high-risk countries’ like Bangladesh, which was the site of a tragic building collapse last week that killed over 400 people.
CNN reports that the other countries that Disney will cease production in by April 2014 are Belarus, Venezuela, Ecuador and Pakistan.
The news comes after a series of tragedies at factories in these countries. Most recently, there was the collapse in Dhaka, Bangladesh. According to The Associated Press, the death toll from the collapse is now at 487.
A November fire at another Bangladesh factory killed 112 and a fire in Pakistan in September killed 262, notes CNN.
Although less than 1 percent of the factories Disney uses are located in Bangladesh, the move does put pressure on other Western companies to either do the same or use stricter oversight. “There is a move afoot for companies to say clearly, ‘We need to be part of bigger oversight procedures,’”Duke University associate professor Cory Krupp told Bloomberg. “The other way is just to move to Vietnam or Cambodia where they have better standards and the government is better at upholding them, and Bangladesh is going to learn the hard way.”
Bangladesh is also worried about Western companies leaving, notes The New York Times. Mohammad Fazlul Azim, a member of parliament, tried to remind companies that most factories have been following high standards. “This industry is very important to us. Fourteen million families depend on this. It is a huge number of people who are dependent on this industry,” he said.