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Article

25 Jul 2010

Author:
James Melik, BBC News

The human cost of cheap clothing

The garment industry as a whole uses developing countries to manufacture its products but, according to Action Aid, cheap fashion comes at a human price. It says the UK retail company Asda - part of…Walmart - is not paying a decent wage to the workers in south Asia…Asda's Dominic Burch says: "We are extremely focused on trying to improve standards in the factories we work with...It would be easy for Asda to walk away from Bangladesh, but we have made a strategic decision to work with people in Bangladesh in the long term…” Within 12 hours of the BBC telling Asda about a tailoring unit on the top floor of a shopping mall, packing shirts bearing the firm's George logo into plain cardboard boxes, Asda investigators in Dhaka visited the premises and interviewed workers. [also refers to positive steps by Inditex, Marks & Spencer]