Thousands of people, many wearing funeral shrouds, marked the first anniversary of the Rana Plaza disaster with a demonstration outside Bangladeshi capital Dhaka today.

The rush-hour collapse of the clothing factory cost 1,138 lives.

Chanting slogans of “We want compensation” and “Death to the culprits,” the demonstrators, who included injured survivors and the families of the deceased, marched to the ruins of the nine-storey building carrying flowers and wreaths.

Relatives of the 140 workers still unaccounted for also joined in, calling for the government to help find their bodies.

Global labour and rights groups marked the day by criticising Western retailers linked to the disaster.

“Brands are failing the workers a second time,” said Ineke Zeldenrust from the Amsterdam-based Clean Clothes Campaign.

“First they failed to ensure that the factories they bought from were safe and now they are failing the survivors and the victims’ families.”

Global trade union group IndustriALL hit out at retailers for making “woefully inadequate” contributions to a £24 million fund set up to compensate the families of the dead and the injured.

Only £9m has been deposited and the first payments of £381 for each of the survivors and families of the deceased were only made this week.

Others are angry at local authorities for the slow progress in finding the 140 workers still missing since the collapse, while the owner of the building has yet to be charged with any offence by Dhaka police.