Readymade garment (RMG) sector is undeniably a big success story for Bangladesh. We have shown the world that good management can help build a big industry even with cheap and unskilled labour. We have also shown that our people are historically gifted with the skill of stitching and making dresses for men, women and children. By and large, our RMG makers have been successful in building up a strong industrial sector. However, when it comes to branding, the readymade garment makers have largely failed. Bad image and bad branding are badly affecting the industry and if our apparel industry owners fail to handle this issue, the industry will face serious consequences in near future. I was looking for a story of our readymade garment industries the other day and I searched for one on Google. Most of the results it showed were either of collapsed buildings, incidents of fire and demonstration of workers demanding wages and so on. It looked like to me as if there are no bright aspects of our readymade garment sector other than collapsed buildings, fire incidents, labour unrest and similar happenings. Information on Google made it clear that our RMG makers and their platform have failed to create a good branding for our products. It is true that there are problems with our readymade garment industries in terms of rights and wages of the workers, but as a whole the sector has been able to make our country known to the outside world and has become the highest foreign exchange earner for the country. All garment industries are not the same. There are some RMG factories in Bangladesh that are fully compliant and are giving higher salary to their employees than others in Bangladesh as well as the neighbouring countries. Particularly, the industries in the Export Processing Zones are largely compliant and most workers in those industries are satisfied with the treatment of their employers. Unfortunately, these good RMG factories are not featured in the way it should be. Our RMG makers and their platform should take the responsibility to improve branding of their products. First of all, it is high time the platform of RMG owners should disown “a few bad apples” that are responsible for creating a bad image. These few bad spots in the sector are bringing bad name for the big industry. The platform of the RMG makers should not allow them to destroy the most potential sector. Secondly, our readymade garment manufacturers are not investing in branding or public relations. We are not showing the world that some of our companies are fully compliant and are employing a huge number of female workers who were until recently the most neglected section of the society. And the RMG industry has enabled them to lead a better and much improved life. We have largely failed to present the positive image in the media. This is mainly because owners of our readymade garment industries do not appreciate the importance of media in building the image. Although some of them do, they are largely reluctant to invest on doing so. They consider it as a wastage of time and money. Our RMG industries also lack in terms of documentation and knowledge management. RMG sector is the lifeline of Bangladesh economy. So it is not only the responsibility of the owners of apparel industries to showcase a positive image, but the government also has a responsibility to perform. More investment is required for positive image building of our readymade garment sector. While we are concerned about the image building and branding, we should not overlook the issue of the rights of the garment workers. For a sustainable readymade garment industry, we must concentrate on the rights of the workers. The owners might think that it is possible to make big profit overnight by side tracking the workers’ rights, but that might be suicidal in the long run, because unsatisfied workers are not productive workers. As such, both image building and ensuring workers’ rights are equally important.
