The government is set to issue a 15 day ultimatum for submitting corrective plans to the garment factories identified as ‘risky’ during the national inspection, officials said. “We have decided to select 50 amber marked factories shortly that have been asked to conduct detailed engineering assessment (DEA) in the first phase,” Inspector General of Department of Inspection for Factories and Establishments (DIFE) Syed Ahmed told the FE. He added his agency will also ask the factories to submit corrective action plans (CAP) within 15 days. The decision was taken in a meeting of the taskforce held Tuesday at DIFE office in the city. The move came after the poor response to submission of plans by the assessed factories. Some 1,500 garment factories, which remained outside the inspection purview of the western retailers’ groupings, were assessed under the ILO-government joint-initiative. The initial inspection, which began in November 2013, ended in October. Last month, the DIFE asked all the assessed garment factories to submit their plans for approval within the next three months. But it received only 10 structural corrective plans in a month, while five have been approved by the taskforce in the Tuesday’s meeting, sources said. The taskforce was formed in December 2014 to approve the CAPs submitted by the respective garment factories giving the detailed plans on how the remedial work would be done on time. The engineering firms nominated by the International Labour Organization (ILO) only identified faults and recommended action, but without CAP it is not possible to implement the recommendations, officials added. Following the incident, the government formed two taskforces to assist post-inspection remedial activities, they added. The taskforce also selected a group of relevant experts including an engineer who was present during the initial inspection and they would assist the factory managements about CAPs, the DIFE head said.
