The readymade garment factory owners are unhappy with the delay the two platforms of European Union and North American brands and retailers are making in approving detailed engineering assessment reports of the RMG factory buildings. They alleged that many factory owners had been waiting for long for approval of the DEA reports of their factory buildings to carry out remediation works but the retailers’ groups were not approving those as the assessments were not done by the firms nominated by the groups. Factory owners raised question about the intention of the officials of the buyers’ platforms — Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety and Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh. As of August 31, Accord, a platform of EU retailers, received DEA reports from 610 factories and approved only 70. Alliance, a consortium of North American buyers and brands, asked its 176 supplier factories for conducting DEA. Out of 176 factories, 115 have so far submitted the reports to Alliance and only 27 have been approved. Accord has recently come under criticisms from its own member-brands for making delay in approving DEA reports of the Bangladesh RMG factory buildings submitted by their owners. The signatories of Accord at a recent steering committee meeting of the forum said that the delay in approval of DEAs was a major obstacle to completing remediation process in time. RMG factory owners in Bangladesh said the unusual delay in approving DEA reports was hampering the remediation works as well as the production at the factories. A BGMEA source claimed that after a long wait for approval, some of the owners were asked to conduct fresh DEA with additional requirements. The factory owners who are not conducting DEA with the firms nominated by engineers of Accord and Alliance are facing harassment, the source said. ‘We are not bound to conduct DEA with the nominated firms of Accord and Alliance, but they are creating situation for us to go for them,’ said Mohammed Hatem, former vice-president of the Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association. Expressing doubt over the transparency of the engineers of Accord and Alliance, he said that many factory owners had been asked to re-submit DEA without showing any reason. Brad Loewen, chief safety inspector of Accord, told New Age that DEAs were required to be prepared by professional structural engineers registered in Bangladesh but many of the DEAs submitted to Accord were lacking in proper engineering technique. Accord continues to work with the engineering consultants to ensure proper remediation of structurally weak buildings, he said. Any comment from Alliance on the issue could not be obtained. The slow pace in approving DEA reports was the much-talked-about agenda in the quarterly steering committee meeting of Accord that held in New York of the USA in October 13-14. In the meeting, citing surveys by brands, C&A chairman (ethical trading initiative) Philip Chamberlain said that the DEA review process was the biggest obstacle to the remediation process. Inditex representative Santiago Martinez-Lage Sobredo said there was a lack of methodology and clear guidelines for the DEA process. H&M representative Roger Hubert commented that Accord approved only 17 DEA reports in three months (June-August) and clearly this indicated more resources needed to be allocated to this. The accompanying narrative is not clear and is open to negative interpretation, the difference between acceptance, rejection and re-submission of DEAs requires clarification, he said. Brad said that there were DEA guidelines available on the Accord web site and that DEA re-submissions were the result of a lack of expertise in Bangladesh not because of a lack of guidelines. The primary focus of Accord was on red and red/amber factories and these did not experience major delays in review and the reviews of factories of less concern took longer, he said in the meeting. After the Rana Plaza building collapse, which killed more than 1,100 people, mostly garment workers, in April 2013, retailers and apparel brands from the EU and North America separately formed Accord and Alliance. Both the initiatives announced inspection programmes in Bangladesh RMG factories and completed inspections in 2,185 garment factories. During the initial inspections, Accord and Alliance agreed to accept each other’s certification to avoid duplication in inspection. As many as 34 factories which supply products to the members of Accord and Alliance were shut down during the inspections and 23 others were partially closed due to structural faults. Accord and Alliance are now conducting remediation verification inspections in the factories.
