A slow pace of completing a database of workers in the readymade garment sector may cause delay in receiving financial assistance by the workers from the RMG sector central fund. At a meeting on May 15 this year, the RMG sector central fund management committee took decision to collect 0.03 per cent of freight on board prices from the garment factory owners from July 1 for depositing the money in the fund and to start giving financial assistance to the sector workers or their family members from December. To determine would-be beneficiaries of the fund, the labour ministry on a number of occasions urged the RMG sector leaders to finalise a biometric database of workers within a short period of time but more than 50 per cent of the RMG factories are yet to start the process. According to the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association data, 2,007 out of about 4,500 active members of the trade body have come under the process and fingerprints of 9.66 lakh workers of 1,097 factories have been collected to store those in the database. Officials of the Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association said that the trade body signed an agreement with an IT firm last week to prepare database of workers working at the knitwear factories and the process would start soon. ‘We urged the garment sector leaders repeatedly to prepare worker database quickly but factory owners were reluctant to go with the direction though they promised several times to do the job,’ labour secretary Mikail Shipar told New Age on Thursday. He said that the workers would receive financial assistance from the fund from December but the workers of those factories which would not prepare database would be deprived of the benefit from the fund. Shipar said that when the workers would be deprived of the benefit from the fund, the factory owners would have to face unrest in their factories and then the factory authorities would be forced to come under the initiative. As per the amended labour act, formation of sector-wise central fund is mandatory for 100 per cent export-oriented industrial sectors or for any industry which has made its investment only in foreign currencies. The labour ministry on March 27 had formed a 10-member board to set up the central fund for the RMG sector, to determine contributions and their realisation procedure and provisions for utilisations of the money for welfare of beneficiaries in the RMG sector. The government started to collect 0.03 per cent of freight on board prices from the RMG factory owners from July 1 and more than Tk 12 crore have been deposited to the fund up to mid October, labour secretary said. As per the rules, the money will be deposited equally in the two accounts — beneficiary account and contingency account. Financial assistance for workers or their family members will be taken from the beneficiary account while the amount deposited in the contingency account will be used to meet the dues of workers of any closed factory if its owner is unable to pay the workers. From the beneficiary account, workers would get up to Tk 3 lakh for death or permanent disability due to accident at work places and up to Tk 2 lakh for illness while the premium of group insurance and health insurance would be paid from the contingency account. Mohammad Hatem, former vice-president of the BKMEA, said that though the fund management committee decided to provide financial assistance to the apparel sector workers from the fund from December, the process might be delayed as the workers database was yet to be ready. He, also a member of the central fund, said that a policy should be formulated to scrutinise the claims to be made by the workers for giving assistance from the fund. Hatem said that the BKMEA would start preparing a biometric database of workers within a short time.
