The government has completed its part of inspecting 1000 ready-made garment (RMG) factories to oversee structural, fire and electrical safety initiatives taken by owners and its progresses, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) said on Wednesday. The ILO is monitoring implementation of post-Rana Plaza collapse restructuring of the RMG industry, aiming to improve compliance status of international standard. Following the Rana Plaza collapse, the ILO says, the immediate priority was to carry out safety inspections of all 3,508 export-oriented RMG factories in Bangladesh. To date, some 2,904 RMG factories have been inspected of which 1,000 fall under the government’s National Initiative under the Tripartite Plan of Action, supported by the ILO with backing from Canada, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. A further 1,904 factories have been inspected by the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety and the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety. “This is a significant milestone as we seek to create a safer RMG sector for Bangladesh. We are now making concerted efforts to complete as many inspections as possible by the 31 July deadline. We will not compromise on the safety of workers. After this date, factories will no longer receive inspections for free and will need to meet the costs themselves if they wish to continue exporting,” said Syed Ahmed, Inspector General of the Department of Inspection of Factories and Establishments. Srinivas Reddy, ILO Country Director for Bangladesh, said that the scope of the government goes far beyond carrying out factory inspections. “The national initiative has seen an intensive process of cooperation and collaboration on areas such as the harmonization of inspection standards and reporting. Considerable efforts have also been made to establish management processes within regulators to effectively follow up on inspection reports in a systematic and transparent manner,” he said. As of now, only 604 factories from the original list remain to be inspected, an ILO statement said. Inspection of factories under the national initiative has been hampered due to the number of factories having closed, moved or changed contact details. Significant efforts involving Department of Inspection for Factories and Establishments (DIFE), the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), the Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BKMEA) and ILO are underway to create a comprehensive and accurate list of actively exporting RMG factories. This will be a valuable tool and will form the basis for follow-up activities and knowledge management systems, the ILO said.
