Garment workers are still vulnerable to safety risks as majority of the production units assessed under a national initiative are yet to fix the identified flaws, industry insiders said. On the other hand, some 800 to 1,000 factories are yet to come under any of the three safety programmes launched by the western retailers and a joint project of the government and International Labour Organisation (ILO), thus posing safety risks to the workers, they added. According to Department of Inspection for Factories and Establishments (DIFE), some 4,809 garment factories are in operation across the country — 1,531 have been assessed by Accord, 675 by Alliance and 1,549 by the national initiative. The rest remained out of the purview of the assessment. Of those, many were not affiliated with the two apparel sector trade bodies — Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) and Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BKMEA). After the Rana Plaza building collapse that killed more than 1,100 workers on April 24 in 2013, the western retailers had formed two separate five-year long safety initiatives to ensure workplace safety in the country’s readymade garment sector. Later, the government in cooperation with ILO launched another programme to bring the factories that remain outside the Accord and Alliance inspection purview under the safety monitoring. Though more than one and half years have passed and the inspection of BGMEA and BKMEA member factories, not covered by the Accord and Alliance, has been announced closed in November 2015, no formal post-inspection monitoring has yet been started there, sources added. DIFE Inspector General Md Shamsuzzaman Bhuiyan said some 20 per cent of the flaws have been fixed by the factory owners under the national initiative though formal remediation is yet to start. He, however, could not provide any details of the progress. Admitting slow remediation progress there, he said the remediation co-ordination cell will formally start its post-inspection activities from July next while the DIFE will prioritise the assessed factories and sit with the factory managements next month. “We will ask them to finish the remediation within a set timeframe and request the BGMEA and BKMEA to stop providing utilisation declaration (UD) if they fail to comply with the deadline,” the DIFE chief said. He added that adding they would have no other option but to shut the units if they could not make satisfactory level of progress. Owners’ unwillingness, absence of adequate engineering firms and shortage of financial support were the main hindrances behind the slow remediation progress in garment factories under the national initiative, he explained. He said some 3,542 corrective action plans (CAPs) have been developed — 1,173 were related to fire, 1,176 electrical and the rest structural. On the other hand, more than 75 per cent of the safety hazards identified in the initial inspection by the western retailers’ platforms have been completed, which experts and labour leaders attributed to their strong monitoring and financial capacity of the factory managements. “Seventy-seven per cent of all initial inspections safety findings are completed,” Rob Wayss, Executive Director and Acting Chief Safety Inspector of Accord told the FE. Some 71 factories have been terminated for failure to comply with the Accord safety requirements, Mr Wayss said, adding business relations have been cut with these suppliers. The Alliance also reported that some 75 per cent of all safety issues, including 68 per cent of all high priority issues, have been remediated. It has suspended some 146 supplier factories till date. Only 135 garment factories — 61 Accord inspected and 74 Alliance — have so far completed all remediation from initial inspections, according to the platforms. Workers’ safety risk exists if hazards remain incompletes and slow or poor progress even after one and half years is one kind of weakness, said Kondaker Golam Moazzem, research director of CPD. He recommended technical and operational measures of the DIFE with adequate financial support, saying those units under national initiative were small and medium in size and many of those needed to relocate. He also recommended reviewing the data of garment factories those are yet to be inspected and monitoring them along with the post-inspection activities in factories under the national initiative.
