Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association on Thursday rejected a plea for providing more time to its member factories in Dhaka zone to come under its programme of preparing biometric databases of workers. The BGMEA board of directors in a special meeting on the day decided to keep in force its April 30 resolution to suspend services as from May 1 to the member factories in Dhaka zone who had failed to register with the trade body for preparing biometric databases of their workers. The suspended BGMEA services include issuance of certificates on utilisation declaration against exports, incentives, and tax indemnity for realising machinery from ports.‘We have decided that the time for biometric database will not be increased and the members will have to register with BGMEA to avail the services,’ BGMEA vice president Mahmud Hasan Babu told New Age. Babu said a total of 1,129 factories have so far come under the programme of preparing biometric databases of workers. According to another vice president of the association, Ferdous Pervez Bivon, only 527 factories had come under the programme in the last three years, but in the four days since suspending the services as of May 1 about 550 factories have registered with the trade body to implement the programme. On May 20, 2013, BGMEA instructed the factory owners at Ashulia in Dhaka to complete biometric databases of their workers by August 30 that year, but as of December 25, 2015, only 301 factories entered the names of their workers in the databases.On November 2015, the BGMEA renewed its agreement with two IT firms — Systech Digital Limited and Tiger IT Bangladesh Limited — to revive the programme for enrolment of biometric capture of the workers that started in June 2013. The association in November 2015 asked its members to introduce biometric databases of workers in their respective factories by December 31 last and finally extended the time for completing the task to April 30. However, more than 80 per cent member factories failed to comply with the association’s direction.
