A recent impact assessment has identified a number of shortcomings in the country’s fire and building safety standards, protocols, inspection procedures and training programmes. Among the deficiencies, the assessment has revealed that Bangladesh’s existing building code is not developed on a scheduled frequency for responding to technological or societal updates and the Fire Service and Civil Defence does not conduct fire inspection in a systematic way. The US-based National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) in collaboration with the University of Maryland (UMD) conducted the assessment to review the Alliance programme to improve workers’ safety. The report launched on March 23, however, made a set of short and long-term recommendations for sustainable electrical, fire and life safety in the country’s readymade garment (RMG) manufacturing facilities. “Currently, there are a few requirements in the BNBC that regulate the use and occupancy of existing buildings for fire and life safety. There does not appear to be a comprehensive fire prevention code established to regulate the use and occupancy of existing buildings for safe operations,” it said. It recommended that provisions of a fire prevention code for maintaining existing occupancies be developed and published in a separate code from the building code. This code should establish minimum requirements for building features in existing buildings, fire safety and housekeeping requirements for occupancies, fire prevention requirements, and inspection, testing and maintenance requirements for fire and life safety systems, it said. “It is our understanding that RAJUK conducts plan review only of the structural loading. It is important that a complete plan review be conducted on structural, electrical, fire and life safety designs of buildings,” it said. It suggested a full plan review be conducted to the BNBC and other related construction codes and standards by those agencies, such as RAJUK, CDA, and the BEZPA, which have the authority to regulate construction. The authority should be provided for regulation of construction throughout the entire country of Bangladesh, it recommended. The report found that FSCD visits buildings and provides fire safety training to factory owners unsystematically. It recommended that FSCD conduct fire inspection on a systematic basis to ensure that a minimum level of safety is maintained during on-going occupancy of existing buildings based on the codes adopted. These inspections should also ensure that electrical, fire and life safety systems are inspected, tested and maintained in accordance with the codes and standards adopted, according to the recommendation. “Consideration should be given to establish fire stations that are more tactically positioned in clusters of buildings for faster response. An alternative would be training factory owners to operate fire brigades for firefighting operations within their buildings.” The government agencies with the authority to regulate fire prevention codes of existing buildings shadow the work by the Alliance (and Accord) to learn from their work and familiarise them with the system that has been implemented for the remediation, the report suggested. The impact assessment report also recommended Alliance increase engineering capacity to reduce the backlog of plan review and develop criteria for electrical, fire and life safety assessment deficiencies posing an imminent threat to life safety, as are done for structural safety. It suggested that the Alliance should provide training for factory owners, compliance auditors and mid-level managers and reach out to vested and non-vested organisations such as the ILO, the Institute for Sustainable Communities, the BGMEA and the BKMEA. It also suggested that the government develop a succession plan to assist the national government to transition the work of the Alliance to the appropriate government agencies.
