Development of local expertise and local technical knowhow is essential for ensuring sustainable safety in the readymade garment sector in Bangladesh, experts said at a seminar in Dhaka on Tuesday. They emphasised on partnership and collaboration between government, garment factory owners and universities for developing industrial safety standard. Department of Chemical Engineering of the Institute of Engineers Bangladesh organised the seminar on Hazard and Risk Assessment of Garment Industries in Bangladesh at the Council Hall of the IEB. M Sam Mannan, professor of chemical engineering department of Texas A&M University, presented the keynote paper in the seminar. He urged the government, factory owners and other stakeholders to develop new regulations for compliance. Mannan also an international safety expert, suggested organising a ‘Safety Summit’ in an aim to come up with practical solutions and achievable goals. ‘The aim of safety summit will be to congregation of all the local and international stakeholders with interactive season to address development and identify issues to be focused on,’ he said. Mannan thinks that the EU and North American retailers’ groups can resolve the short-term safety issues in the RMG sector but local expertise is important for achieving a long-term goal. Industries minister Amir Hossain Amu said that there were local and international conspiracies in the readymade garment sector in Bangladesh. Incidents took place in the RMG factories as part of the international conspiracy as global community imposes new conditions after each and every accident, he said. ‘Following the Rana Plaza incident the government took a number of initiatives for improving workplace safety and we have achieved significant progress over the last two years,’ Amu said. Md Mosaddeque Hossain, chairman of Chemical Engineering Department of the IEB, Md Kabir Ahmed Bhuiyan president of the IEB, and Md Abdus Sabur, secretary general of the IEB, also spoke.
