Some 21 selected readymade garment (RMG) factories of the country have successfully implemented the internationally recognised occupational health and safety (OHS) standards for industrial workers and workplace safety. A certification event was held in a city hotel on Wednesday to disseminate the impacts of OHSAS 18001 standards being implemented in those selected garment factories in the country. Labour Secretary Mikail Shipar, Inspector General of Department of Inspection for Factories and Establishments (DIFE) Syed Ahmed, Line Director of the Non-Communicable Disease Control (NCDC) Faruk Ahmed Bhuiyan, Senior Vice President of Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) Faruque Hassan and First secretary of German Development Cooperation in Bangladesh Roswitha Amels, among others, spoke at the event. The event was organised by the Support to the Health Sector Programme II (SHSP II), a Bangladesh-Germany joint project, to showcase the positive impacts of implementing OHSAS 18001 on those factories. The project is implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, which works on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). These days Bangladeshi industrial sector has addressed the specific issues of fire, building and electric safety, and it is time to adopt a holistic approach to address the OSH through operationalising of a management standard, Mr Shipar said. Until now, OHS measures implemented in the industry have been sporadic and disorganised in their approaches. Though there have been numerous efforts for mitigating occupational risks, there lacks, as yet, a unifying standard for measuring and regulating OHS measures. Assistant manager (Sustainability) of DBL Group Mashook Mujib Chowdhury presented his company’s experience with OHSAS 18001 implementation. Apart from the ethical grounding in which such standards should be implemented, he elaborated on the potential benefits of these measures to factories and the industry at large. These included greater acceptability in the compliance-sensitive western markets, which took on added importance following the tragic incidents of Rana Plaza and Tazreen. Moreover, the benefits of ensuring health and safety of garment workers have also been translated to increase worker retention and productivity, as well as the mitigation of massive cost burdens that workplace accidents and hazards would entail, speakers said.
