The government is setting some criteria regarding formation of safety committees in readymade garment (RMG) factories as per the requirement of the recently-framed labour law rules, officials said. Trade union (TU) leaders will nominate the workers’ representatives while workers’ participation committee (WPC) will do the same if there is no registered trade union in factories, they said adding the workers’ representatives will be elected in presence of the chief inspector in absence of both TU and WPC, according to the rules. The Department of Inspection for Factories and Establishments (DIFE) will form safety committees in some 20 selected factories initially on a pilot basis by December 2015, they added. “Initially we will form safety committees in 20 garment factories under our direct supervision within the next two months,” DIFE Inspector General Syed Ahmed told the FE. The main purpose is to create a model to help others to follow, he explained. According to the amended labour law 2013, formation of safety committee is a must for a factory having 50 workers or more and the committee would be administered according to the rules. Though the law was last amended in 2013, the safety committees were not formed in the factories in absence of the rules, labour leaders opined. According to the rules, existing factories have to form safety committees within six months from the date the rules come into effect while the factories, set up after the formulation of the rules, within nine months after production starts. The committee will comprise six to 12 members according to the number of workers ranging from 50 to more than 3,000 in the factory, officials said. Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) recently asked its member-factories to form both participation committees and safety committees and also make them effective. The trade body also requested its members to inform the BGMEA about those committees. The DIFE’s regular inspection, conducted in August in some 159 factories, revealed that 41 per cent garment factories do not have any participation committee, according to a DIFE inspection report. Sixty-one per cent of the inspected BGMEA-listed factories have such committees while it was found in 65 per cent of Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BKMEA) registered units. On the other hand, percentage of non-compliance with the requirement is higher in factories that are not associated with either BGMEA or BKMEA, it added. Babul Akhter, a labour leader, alleged that majority of the registered trade unions in some 500 garment factories cannot freely exercise their rights as most of them are formed by owners’ nominated representatives or controlled by factory management. On the other hand, participation committees in factories are just on papers, not functional, he noted. He requested the DIFE to strictly monitor the formation of safety committees and also whether they are functional or not. “The information as to which a factory has safety committee and which does not have any such body should be incorporated in the publicly accessible database,” he added.
