The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association on Sunday said a national body should take over the responsibility of post-remediation monitoring in the readymade garment sector after July 2018 once the timeframe of the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety ends. In a meeting with the Alliance country director, James Moriarty, at the BGMEA headquarters the country’s apparel sector leaders said they had started work to determine the framework of the proposed national body which would be run by the Department of Inspection for Factories and Establishments. According to meeting sources, in the meeting, Moriarty said that the proposed national body should be nationally and internationally accepted. He also said that the proposed national body should be run by the government but there should not be government interference. ‘We have informed the Alliance country director that the BGMEA has already formed a committee to determine how the post-remediation monitoring in the RMG factories will be carried out after 2018 once the timeframes of the Alliance and European buyers’ group Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh end,’ Mahmud Hassan Khan Babu, vice-president of the BGMEA, told New Age. ‘We will prepare the framework of the proposed national body by mid-December this year and then it will be submitted to the government to form an effective body or a steering committee to oversee the safety issues in the RMG sector,’ Babu said. According to the BGMEA leader, under the leadership of the DIFE, representatives from the buyers, BGMEA, BKMEA, International Labour Organisation, Department of Fire and Civil Defence, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology and the workers’ federations would be included in the proposed body. The Alliance hopes that it will be able to complete its remediation work in the factories by 2017 although it has a timeframe till July 2018, Babu said, quoting Moriarty. The BGMEA on October 29 formed a committee led by its former president Shafiul Islam Mohiuddin to determine how the post-remediation monitoring in the RMG sector would be carried out after the expiry of the Accord and the Alliance in 2018. The committee held two meetings over the last 15 days on the issue and decided to prepare an inclusive framework by mid-December. After the Rana Plaza building collapse, which killed more than 1,100 people, mostly garment workers, in April 2013, North American retailers, including top brands Walmart and Gap, formed the Alliance and European retailers formed the Accord undertaking a five-year plan which set timeframes and accountability for safety inspections and training and workers’ empowerment programmes. The Accord has so far conducted initial inspections at 1,600 factories while the Alliance inspected 759 factories.
