Hello, you're listening to the witness history podcast from the BBC World Service, with me Dan Hardoon.

Today I'm revisiting the deadliest industrial disaster in Bangladesh's history.

It looked like the aftermath of a massive earthquake, the eight-story building collapsing in an instant.

Rescue workers in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka are continuing to hunt for survivors.

On the 24th of April 2013, Rana Plaza, an eight-story building on the outskirts of Dhaka, collapsed,

killing more than a thousand people and injuring many others.

The building housed five garment factories which manufactured clothes for several well-known high-street brands.

I've been talking to Pearl Uctor, who worked as a sewing machinist at Rana Plaza and survived the disaster.

The lives of the survivors have been destroyed. They can't work anymore.

I didn't think for a single moment that such a tragedy could happen and thousands of people would die.

Since the 1980s, rising global demand for cheap, fast fashion and low production costs have helped Bangladesh become the second biggest exporter of clothes globally, just behind China.

Bangladesh's garment factories employ about four million people, most of them women from poor rural backgrounds.

These jobs allowed many women to enter the workforce for the first time and achieve some kind of economic security.

But the sector has been plagued by problems, including low pay and terrible working conditions.

The Rana Plaza disaster wasn't the first incident to expose poor safety standards in Bangladesh's garment factories.

A fire or clothes factory in Bangladesh has killed at least eight people and injured dozens.

The fire and a big garment factory in Bangladesh has killed at least 25 people and injured many others.

Padul Akhtar started working at Rana Plaza in 2008 when she was 18, sewing t-shirts, shirts and trousers.

The environment was not good, but we had to work there because we were hungry and needy.

There was a lot of noise coming from the machines and the other workers. I felt suffocated.

Suppose I was feeling a bit ill or a bit down. If production failed, the managers would insult us and remind us of our hourly targets.

Padul's working day often lasted 12 hours or more, including over time she got paid 9,000 t-shirts per month, equivalent to around $110 today.

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