A section of readymade garment factory owners has alleged that the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, a consortium of North American retailers, is incorporating additional corrective action plan to factories during its follow-up inspection. The factory owners have recently informed the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association that the inclusion of additional CAP may hamper the smooth progress of remediation process. The BGMEA last week requested the North American retailers group to limit follow-up visits to factories and not to include additional cap as the factories are implementing CAPs on initial findings. A senior official of Alliance said that they had received a letter in this regard from the BGMEA and assured the garments factory owners that in the final inspection the Alliance declared factories compliant or noncompliant based on the implementation of corrective action plans on initial findings. ‘We are giving follow-up findings to some factories to help the factory authorities in ensuring more safe working place in their establishments but the progresses of follow-up corrective actions will not be considered during the final inspection,’ he said. BGMEA officials said that the follow-up inspections were usually carried out to assess the corrective actions taken on the points originally covered in the CAP. The BGMEA in its letter requested the Alliance to evaluate the corrective actions to a later date after implementation of the original CAP. It said that new findings were likely to hamper the remediation process as factory owners were engaged in implementing the original CAP. ‘….if follow-up visits continue to add new findings in the CAP, it may turn out to be a never ending process for both the factory and the Alliance,’ the BGMEA letter said. After the Rana Plaza building collapse in April 2013 that killed more than 1,100 people, mostly garment workers, the North American retailers formed Alliance for Bangladesh Workers Safety. The initiative launched inspection programmes in the Bangladeshi RMG factories from where their members procure products and completed their primary safety assessments in their listed factories numbering over 600. The retailers’ group targeted to complete its final inspection by July 2017 and now the Alliance is verifying through periodic visits that factories are making progress and completing remediation in accordance with the Alliance standards.
