North American retailers’ group has cut business relations with five more readymade garment factories based in Dhaka and Chittagong citing that the factory authorities have failed to make their establishments safer for their workers. According to an Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety announcement, relations with four factories have been suspended due to their failure in complying with government-set review panel’s recommendations. The Alliance cut relations with another one due to its failure in making adequate remediation progress. The five factories are: AMC Sweater Ltd in Gazipur, Darda Knit Wears Ltd at Ashulia and Maggie and Liz Corporation (PVT) Ltd, Maks Fashion Ltd and Montex Apparels Ltd in Chittagong. With the effect, the total number of the suspended supplier factories by the Alliance reached to 31.After the Rana Plaza building collapse, which killed more than 1,100 people, mostly garment workers, in April 2013, North American retailers, including top brands Walmart and Gap, formed the Alliance and European retailers formed the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh undertaking a five-year plan which set timelines and accountability for inspections and training and workers’ empowerment programmes. The Alliance has so far inspected 870 factories while the Accord inspected more than 1,600 supplier factories.During the inspection, 34 factories, linked to the Accord and the Alliance, were closed and 26 were partially closed due to serious structural safety risk. After completion of initial inspection, the retailers’ groups started follow-up inspections to implement corrective action plan in the factories.During the process the Accord also terminated business relations with 13 factories due to lack of fixing in safety issues suggested by the retailers’ group. A recent report of the Accord said that more than 1,000 supplier factories of the initiative remained behind schedule with the remediation. The Accord has issued warning letters to 209 factories and said if no action is taken following this letter the business relations will be terminated with the units.
