The readymade garment factory owners are likely to get two more months for completing structural and fire and electrical safety inspection at their units free of cost under the initiative of International Labour Organisation. Following a request from the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association the ILO has agreed to extend the time frame for completing cost-free factory inspection by two more months. The ILO had set July 31 as the final deadline for the completion of the safety inspection and announced that after the deadline factory owners would have to bear the cost of safety assessment at their units. The ILO had missed several deadlines before due to non-cooperation from some factory owners and inconsistency in information given about factory locations and contact numbers. On July 6, in a letter to the ILO the BGMEA requested to extend the inspection time up to September 30 saying that if the safety inspection led by the government and the ILO ends on July 31, some factories would remain out of the assessment due to Ramadan and other unavoidable reasons. Shahidullah Azim, vice-president of the BGMEA, told New Age on Saturday that the ILO accepted the request of the BGMEA and it would issue a letter to the trade body soon extending the time for safety inspection. He said that the issue had been discussed at4 a meeting between secretaries of labour, commerce and foreign ministry and five ambassadors including US and European Union on July 24 at the foreign ministry. The inspector general of the Department of Inspection for the Factories and Establishments, Syed Ahmed, raised the issue at the meeting and the ambassadors and the ILO representative agreed that the inspection time should be extended, Azim said. After the Rana Plaza building collapse that killed more than 1,100 people, mostly garments workers, in April 2013, the government and the ILO decided to carry out safety inspection at all 3,508 export-oriented RMG factories across Bangladesh. Around 3,000 RMG factories have so far been inspected. Of them, more than 1,000 units fall under the government’s initiative under the Tripartite Plan of Action, supported by the ILO and 1,904 factories have been inspected by the EU and North American retailers’ groups. After the Rana Plaza building collapse, EU retailers formed Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh while North American retailers formed Alliance for Bangladesh Workers Safety.
