The government and the International Labour Organisation started a joint programme to increase the capacity of government officials to promote workplace cooperation and handle grievances in the country’s readymade garment sector. Under an ILO project namely ‘Improving Social Dialogue and Harmonious Industrial Relations in the Bangladesh RMG sector’, a five-day training programme started on Monday to establish a pool of 30 master trainers comprising officials of the Directorate of Labour and Industrial Relations Institutes. Four staffs from Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association and Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association also took part in the training programme. The project was launched in December 2016 with financial support of Sweden and Denmark aimed at developing dialogue mechanisms between employers and workers as a means of preventing and constructively resolving disputes. Initial training of the master trainers would focus on workplace cooperation, with future sessions set to cover collective bargaining and grievance handling procedures. ‘This training marks an important first step in our efforts to create better social dialogue in Bangladesh,’ the ILO deputy director Gagan Rajbhandari said at the opening ceremony of the training programme at Amari Hotel in Dhaka. He said that enhancing capacity of the DoL and IRI would help to build a more mature industrial relations environment for Bangladesh that would benefit employers and workers alike. Labour ministry additional secretary Miah Abdullah Mamun, director of the labour directorate Abu Hena Mostafa Kamal, and ITC programme officer Sylvain Baffi attended the programme.The training programme has been developed with the support of ILO’s International Training Centre and it was the first of a series to be held under the ILO’s Improving Social Dialogue and Harmonious Industrial Relations in the Bangladesh RMG sector project. According to the project, the master trainers would play a crucial role to support the development of workplace cooperation plans in 34 non-unionised factories out of a group of 54 pilot factories provided by the BGMEA and BKMEA.
