Accord, the garment factory inspection agency sponsored by European retailers, is in discussion with the government to extend its tenure in Bangladesh beyond June 2018 to ensure completion of remediation works in all its member factories. The platform is planning to extend its stay in Bangladesh by another three years, much to the displeasure of garment factory owners. The number of factories from which the 220 Accord signatories source has expanded much since the inspections started in February 2014, said Rob Wayss, executive director and acting chief safety inspector of the agency. At present, it stands at upwards of 7,000The platform is now conducting its fourth batch of preliminary inspections, meaning the more recently inspected factories will not have finished with their remediation by June 2018, he told The Daily Star in an interview last week. “Our experience to date has been that approximately 18 percent of items that are reported to us as corrected prove not to be corrected or not to be properly corrected when our engineers do our follow-up verification inspections. ”Accord’s first batch of inspections concluded in September 2014 and the remediation works in this group of factories will most definitely be complete by June 2018. “We expect that the factories inspected in our first batch of inspections in Feb-Sept 2014 will complete initial remediation in the first half of 2017. ”About 72 percent of the total findings from the initial inspections are reported as corrected by the factories and/or verified as corrected by Accord engineers, Wayss said. After the Rana Plaza building collapse, 220 retailers joined hands to form the Accord with the view to fixing the structural, electrical and fire loopholes in Bangladesh’s garment factories.
