State minister for labour and employment Mujibul Haque on Thursday said that from 2018 Bangladesh would no longer require assistance of Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh and Alliance for Bangladesh Workers Safety, two platforms of global buyers, for RMG factory safety inspection. ‘We have told the 15-member European Parliament delegation that Bangladesh has strengthened the Department of Inspection for Factories and Establishments to a great extent and the body would be fully capable of taking over the responsibility of safety inspection by the year,’ the junior minister said at a briefing after a meeting with the visiting team at the Secretariat in Dhaka. European Parliament international trade committee chairman Bernd Lange, head of European Union delegation to Bangladesh Pierre Mayaudon, labour secretary Mikail Shipar, inspector general of the DIFE Syed Ahmed were present at the meeting, among others. H&M, a Swedish multinational clothing-retail company and one of the signatory of the Accord, has already made a proposal to the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association in favour of extending the tenure of the Accord for additional three years. The retailer apprehended that the remediation work at the garment factories in Bangladesh might not be completed by July, 2018. Replying to a question in this regard, the state minister told reporters that any decision on extension of tenure of Accord and Alliance depended on the consensus between the governmentand the buyers’ groups. The buyers’ groups (Accord and Alliance) cannot extend the tenure unilaterally, he said. Mujibul said that the EU delegation wanted to know about the status of implementation of labour act, elimination of child labour, women empowerment, registration of trade union, and labour rights in the export processing zones. The state minister informed the delegation that the child labour in 38 hazardous sectors would be eliminated by 2021 and the country would be fully free of child labour by 2025. ‘Replying to queries, the labour ministry informed the visiting delegation that the government has no plan to amend the labour act further and the government is formulating a new act for the EPZ workers ensuring right for collective bargaining,’ Mujibul said. The ministry also informed that the rate of rejection of the applications for trade union registration decreased to 26 per cent in the year of 2016 from 73 per cent in the year 2015 and the total number of trade unions in the readymade garment sector stood at 532. ‘We have told the delegation that with the assistance of International Labour Organisation the ministry is working to form a remediation coordination cell to oversee the safety situation in the RMG sector. A good number of Bangladeshi experts will be included in the cell and it would be capable to maintain international standards in factory safety,’ Mujibul said.
