Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association has revived its initiative to prepare a biometric database of the garment workers. After the Tazreen Fashions fire in November 2012 that killed 112 garment workers, the BGMEA had taken the initiative of preparing a biometric database of workers and signed memoranda of understanding with two IT farms — Systech and Tiger IT. Following the tragic Rana Plaza building collapse in April 2013, that killed more than 1,100 people—mostly garment workers—the then BGMEA president Atiqul Islam had asked the BGMEA member factories to prepare a biometric database of their workers. On May 20, 2013, he instructed factory owners in Ashulia to complete biometric database of their workers by August 30 that year. Though the BGMEA announced biometric database of workers mandatory, the factory owners showed very little response and only 300 factories had registered with the BGMEA for the service while full-fledged work was going on in 250 factories covering a total of 1,50,000 workers, up to March 2014. In the name of political turmoil and pressure from buyers to meet safety requirements, the factory owners expressed their unwillingness to introduce biometric database in their units. ‘This week we are going to sign a new MoU with the Tiger IT and Systech Digital Ltd to revive the biometric capture of the RMG workers as the previous initiative was stopped due to some reasons,’ BGMEA vice president Mahmud Hasan Khan Babu told New Age on Friday. ‘We will start the work from the point where the process was stopped,’ he said. As per the new agreement the work of biometric database would start from mid-February targeting the completion of biometric capture of workers in 2,000 factories by June next year, he said. Babu said that in the new agreement, the cost for preparing biometric database will be reduced and a factory owner will have to pay from around Tk 45,000 to Tk 1.5 lakh based on their manpower while the amount was around Tk 1.75 lakh to Tk 3.5 lakh in the previous deal. He said that biometric data base is a must for the BGMEA member factories and in the first phase the biometric capture would be introduced in about 150 factories which are owned by the board of directors of the trade body. The bio-metric database is important to ensure identification of a worker including family details, record about the worker’s service details including factory and employer and dates of his or her joining or leaving the job and the reasons, Babu said. ‘We do not know how many workers there are in the RMG sector. To ensure the exact number of workers in the sector a complete database of workers is a must,’ he said. According to the BGMEA source, the trade body has 4,200 member factories, of which 2,500 are in operation. The BGMEA is going to sign a MoU with the IT firms for the operation and development of database for 10 years and the BGMEA will have to pay Tk 2 crore for each year to the firms. Though the incumbent board of directors of the trade body said that the new agreement would reduce cost for workers database, the BGMEA leaders who were involved with the process, however, said that the cost of new initiative would be higher than the previous initiative. One of the BGMEA leaders said that as per the rules under labour act RMG exporters will have to pay 0.3 per cent against total export to the workers welfare fund, established by the government. To utilise the fund for the RMG workers the exact number and identification of workers is mandatory.
