When the ILO country director in Bangladesh tells us that Bangladesh has made significant progress towards ensuring workplace safety and protecting jobs, we have every reason to believe him. When Accord and Alliance don’t find many of our factories on the dock or failing their scrutiny, we should be happy about that. When the ILO’s regional director tells us Bangladesh has to do a lot in order to ensure sustainable worker safety, and more importantly, protect and increase jobs, we agree to focus on productivity improvement and moving the entire value chain upward. The BGMEA president feels that a small factory with 500-600 workers needs half a million dollars to relocate, create better working conditions in its factory premises, and build 3,200 factories large and small — it will require a much larger amount than that. On the other hand, we still hear that many Rana Plaza victims never received their compensations, and even the money received in the prime minister’s relief fund for supporting Rana Plaza victims still remains terribly underutilised. According to reports, the buyers’ consortium are also running short of their committed contribution. We have heard that the main challenge for Bangladesh’s garments sector is price. After the fire incident at Tazreen Fashions and the Rana Plaza building collapse, the cost of production has increased significantly, but retailers do not pay higher prices for apparel items. Although Accord and Alliance have already inspected most of the factories, they did not approach any retailers to increase the volume of work orders from factories housed in shared buildings. Buyers’ representatives identified five specific challenges to the sector: Finance to remedy the factory buildings, safety in the factories that are not under the purview of Accord and Alliance’s inspection, relocation of factories from Dhaka to other places, a policy for sub-contracts, and the departure of Accord and Alliance after 2018 — manufacturers were concerned whether the workplace safety programs would continue after the departure of these agencies after June 2018. I have heard the ILO country director saying a mechanism should be adopted by the government, BGMEA, and BKMEA to take the responsibility of monitoring factory buildings after the departure of agencies like Alliance and Accord. Many within development partners feel that since the Bangladesh labour law has been amended, it should be put to action soon. Why has nobody questioned whether the infrastructure bottlenecks or high bank interest rates could be the only things responsible for non-optimal growth of apparel industries? Courtesy of the Rana Plaza episode, Bangladesh apparel workers have seen a sharp rise in their wages. It has become almost on-par with India. Despite many industrie being suspended by the biggies to either work as their vendors or have sub-contracting stopped, prices have not seen any significant rise. Many industries are not able to finance shifts from a shared building or purchasing new firefighting or disaster management equipment. Though productivity has been identified as the single most important issue, most of the industries could not invest enough on worker training or the replacement of outdated machinery. Despite much hue and cry, development partners and buyer syndicates were unable to come up with any notable “bailout” packages. The suspension of the GSP, possible facility curtailment by the EU, offering better facilities to competing countries, delays in the establishment of industrial clusters or special economic zones, and emerging competition from India and Vietnam are also being discussed as possible barriers to the RMG sector’s growth. Some are talking of shifting orders to Kenya, Ethiopia, or even the possible rise of Myanmar. I would put price and productivity as the critical success factors for Bangladesh’s apparel industry. Solutions to both warrant coordinated efforts from industry owners, commerce and labour ministries, governments of buying countries, buyer syndicates, and development partners. Only productivity improvement and scale-up can help divert many orders from Vietnam and China. Optimum price from the buying companies can also help with investing enough on worker training and the development of supervisors. Proper water usage, reduced accidental losses, and competitive financing packages can ensure better spreads or savings, contributing much to the entrepreneur’s ability to recycle or reinvest profits. The industry has to be process-driven rather than owner-driven. Average or ad-hoc solutions seem to still haunt our apparel sector. Should we allow our RMG sector to grow further, where there are multiple challenges faced by this industry? Or we should instead give impetus to our textile sector or other exporting entities? I would say there is still enough head-room for our RMG industry to grow. A shift to better quality clothes, better design, and improved productivity and workplaces can fetch better prices, create more employment, accelerate poverty reduction, and create a large pool of people with higher purchasing power to buy more locally-produced goods and services — giving further impetus to local industries. It is high time we focused on worker responsibilities and obligations along with workers’ rights and, more importantly, protect each worker through accident coverage insurance.
