In Bangladesh, the sham of Shams factory — Alex Newman

UPDATE 12/30/2022: The AJAM projects server is no longer live. Files available upon request.

This project looked at two companies: producer Shams factory (part 1) and clothing seller The Children's Place (part 2). Since the Rana Plaza tragedy in 2013 where more than 1,100 workers were killed when the eight-story building collapsed, little has been done to create better working conditions at the Shams factory. Part of this story included using a pair of children's shorts from the website to help illustrate the global shipping, and using shipping records to show how The Children's Place had altered its supply chain in recent years to factories in Bangladesh.

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We traced the route a pair of boys’ pineapple chino shorts took from the Shams Styling Wears factory on the outskirts of Dhaka, Bangladesh, to the Al Jazeera newsroom in New York City.

After the shorts were manufactured, they were transported by truck or train to the port city of Chittagong.

In Chittagong, 2,135 cardboard boxes were loaded into a 40-foot container, CLHU470760. The container was put on a short-haul cargo ship that was headed for Colombo, Sri Lanka.

In Colombo, the container was transferred to the long-haul ship APL Colombo, which made the trip from Sri Lanka to Savannah, Georgia, in the United States in 26 days.

The container was unloaded and taken by truck to a warehouse in Fort Payne, Alabama. There the shorts were taken out of the container, and we were no longer able to track them.