A high-level International Labour Organization team is set to visit Bangladesh to assess the labour rights situation as the agency is not convinced with the country’s labour condition report submitted last year. Labour ministry officials said a review on labour rights in the countries who ratified ILO conventions regarding freedom of association and collective bargaining is held every year at Geneva. In the last review meeting in July 2015, the report presented by Bangladesh could not garner confidence of the ILO, and the organization had decided to physically scrutinise the progress made in institutionalising labour rights after the infamous Rana Plaza collapse. According to a labour ministry official, the five-member team led by Elizabeth Onuko, minister counsellor (Labour) at Kenya mission, Geneva, is scheduled to arrive here on April 17 on a four-day visit to assess the labour rights issues, especially trade union registration and anti-union activities in the readymade garment sector. The other members of the delegation are Sonia Regenbogen, Marc Leemans, Karen Curtis, and Veronika Vajdova. ‘The ILO team is coming to scrutinise the actual progress made in the labour rights scenario in Bangladesh. They would especially collect information on the progress in trade union registration in the RMG sector,’ labour secretary Mikail Shipar told New Age. He said the team would hold meeting with the government, labour leaders and factory owners and visit industrial units to gather information on the present labour rights situation. During the visit, the team will hold meetings with commerce and labour ministries, the chairman of Bangladesh Export Processing Zone Authority, as well as workers’ and employers’ organisations. Following the visit, the team will submit a report to the ILO identifying the areas where further progresses are needed to make. Earlier, a high-powered delegation of the Direct Contacts Mission of the ILO had visited Bangladesh to scrutinise some key issues including the activities and capacities of a number of organisations involved in ensuring workers’ safety and rights and the process of registering trade unions formed by the workers of factories both within and outside the export processing zones in October last year.
