A total of 219 readymade garment factories which were graded as amber (medium risky) during the safety inspection under a national initiative have so far made a very insignificant progress in remediation due to lack of logistic and technical support and unwillingness of the factory owners, said government officials and RMG sector leaders. According to a report of the Department of Inspection for Factories and Establishments, the amber-graded factories made 16 per cent progress in structural remediation while the factories achieved 10 per cent progress in implementing fire safety-related corrective action plan.The report showed that the factories made 14 per cent progress in implementing electrical safety-related corrective action plan. The government in association with the ILO inspected 1,549 RMG factories in 2014-15. Of the units, 25 were graded as red (risky) while 219 factories were graded as amber (medium risky) and asked them to conduct detailed engineering assessment of the factory buildings. After completion of initial safety inspection, the DIFE on November 10 last year asked the factory owners to submit corrective action plans to the department within next three months. Most of the factories under red category are now closed while some are operating under close monitoring. Up to July this year, 104 factories are yet to start DEA while 16 units disagreed to conduct DEA, the report showed. It showed that only 20 factories completed DEA while 35 are in process to do the assessment. The DIFE report showed that out of the 219 amber-graded factories, 128 made zero progress in structural remediation, 110 made zero progress in fire-related remediation and 114 made no progress in electrical remediation. ‘Despite lack of manpower with technical knowledge about remediation, we are putting pressure on the factory owners to fix the safety issues in their units and we are trying to provide support based on our limited capacity,’ the DIFE inspector general Syed Ahmed told New Age on Saturday. He said the government in association with the ILO has taken an initiative to establish a remediation coordination cell but it (formation of the cell) would take time. ‘After establishing the RCC, a number of qualified engineers would be recruited and the DIFE officials and RMG sector representatives will be engaged in the cell to speed up the remediation work,’ Syed said. He admitted that remediation progress under the national initiative was very insignificant and sought cooperation from the factory owners to make the RMG sector safe. Faruq Hassan, senior vice-president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, said the factory owners who want to run their business have no alternative but to complete remediation. ‘We are encouraging factory owners to implement corrective action plan but the problem is that many factories under the national initiative are housed in rented buildings and the building owners are not interested in fixing safety issues,’ he said. Lack of knowledge of the factory owners about remediation and lack of capacity of the inspection department were also the other causes of the slow progress in remediation but the national capacity will be increased in line with the remediation process of Accord and Alliance, Faruq said. After the Rana Plaza building collapse that killed more than 1,100 people, mostly garment workers, in April 2013, European retailers formed Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh while North American retailers formed Alliance for Bangladesh Workers Safety. Both the initiatives launched inspection programmes in the Bangladeshi RMG factories from where their members procure products and the initiatives completed their primary safety assessments in over 2,150 factories. The government in association with the ILO announced a separate inspection programme for the rest of the garment factories which were not on the lists of the Alliance and the Accord. According to separate reports of two global retailers’ platforms, Accord-listed factories made 64 per cent progress in structural, fire and electrical remediation while Alliance-listed units made 57 per cent progress.
