The government has taken a move to bring all the formal industrial sectors of the country under an effective inspection framework aiming to help implement the existing labour law, officials have said. The Department of Inspection for Factories and Establishments (DIFE) in collaboration with International Labour Organisation (ILO) is preparing a comprehensive checklist to assess the workplace, health safety and other labour rights situation in the country’s industrial sectors in line with the labour law, they added. The draft checklist has put in place general information about factories and establishments like legal approval, number of workers, job related issues like employment conditions, working hours, leave and maternity benefits, child labour, workers’ participation in companies’ profit, wage and trade union related issues, welfare fund and workplace and health safety issues, the officials mentioned. They pointed out that there is only an inspection manual for ready-made garment (RMG) industry while there are more than 45 industrial sectors including jute, pharmaceuticals, ship-breaking, ship-building, brickfields, chemicals, re-rolling, tannery and plastic sectors in the country. According to a recent DIFE report, its regular inspections identified some 23,218 registered factories and establishments till March 2014 and 5,002 of them were RMG units. Referring to a Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) preliminary report on economic census 2013, the DIFE report said the number of economic units in that calendar year stood at 8,075,704 from 2,169,419 in 1986. The move has been taken following the country’s worst-ever industrial accidents like Tazreen Fashions fire and Rana Plaza building collapse that allowed many initiatives including assessment of garment factories by brands and retailers to assess and improve safety and other compliance related issues, the officials added. “We are preparing a comprehensive checklist in cooperation with ILO so that all the industrial sectors come under an effective inspection system,” DIFE Inspector General Syed Ahmed told the FE Monday. There is a checklist approved by social compliance forum in 2012 for RMG sector while some other sectors are also being assessed with the same checklist, but it not enough to assess the situation for all, he explained. The main objective of the checklist was to carry out proper inspections, ensure workers’ rights and develop an inspection structure to help implement the laws of the land, the DIFE IG said, adding that it would reflect “our expectations as to what we exactly want from assessment.” As there is no such inspection checklist except for RMG, he said, it was necessary for ensuring better workplace safety and safeguarding welfare and interests of both employers and workers. The draft of the assessment guideline has already been prepared and DIFE will hold discussions with all stakeholders especially to get opinions from both owners and workers, he said. After consultation with the stakeholders, the draft would be finalised and DIFE inspectors would visit the factories and establishments accordingly, Mr Ahmed added. Following lack of inspection capacity to assess a large number of garment factories, different foreign firms under the umbrella of buyers’ platforms — Accord and Alliance — were being allowed to inspect local factories, labour ministry officials said. The office of the Chief Inspector for Factories and Establishments was upgraded to a full-fledged department with an increase in budget allocation and manpower in this regard, they added. DIFE has identified some area-based priority sectors beyond RMG including hotels, shops and restaurants, light engineering, construction, transport, rice mills, shipyard, fish processing units to enhance its inspection and monitoring activities, they added.
