More than 500 readymade garment (RMG) factories might lose their eligibility to produce apparels for around 200 Accord-signatory brands and buyers with the departure of the platform from Bangladesh after this month, sources said.Some 139 and 393 factories are currently in the second and first phase of Accord’s escalation process respectively as they failed to do the required remediation works, they added.A ‘premature closure’ of the Accord office in Bangladesh will likely have negative consequences related to the Accord’s ability to monitor and verify remediation progress at the Accord-covered factories, the platform wrote to the buyers.Therefore, all the stage two factories-139 would be escalated to stage three on December 01 – and some 393 factories those remain at the stage one for more than six months would be escalated to stage two, potentially stage three by January 01, next year, according to the letter, a copy of which was obtained by the FE.”Therefore, if the restraining order is not lifted, these supplier factories will no longer be eligible to produce for any Accord signatory brands,” it said on November 08 in one of its communication with the signatory brands and buyers.”Brands currently sourcing from these factories will be required to terminate their business relationship in accordance with Article 16 of the Accord and time-frame set forth in the Accord Escalation Protocol,” it added.There is a high court directive to the Accord that asked the platform to depart from the country by November 30 this year.The Accord will make arrangements to continue its follow-up inspections might be through contracting of international engineering firms to conduct inspections, the platform said.As a result, the Accord has to prioritise its inspection capacity to factories that have participated adequately in the Accord programme and are most likely to be completing remediation, it added.When asked, Vice President of Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) Faruque Hassan said that some buyers have already informed their respective suppliers about the issue.Terming the possible business termination of 532 factories ‘not logical’, he said: “These factories are doing the remediation work which might be taking some additional time.”The Accord should handover the responsibility of these factories to the Remediation Coordination Cell so that the national body could look after the issues. Some 182 Accord-listed garment factories have faced business termination since June 2014 to August 30 this year due to their failure in doing post-inspection flaw-fixing works within the set timeframe, industry people said.Fire, electrical and structural integrity in some 1,600 garment factories have so far been inspected by Accord engineers after the Rana Plaza building collapse and 89 per cent of the flaws have been corrected till September last.There is pressure from different arena especially from the global buyers, investors and the EU parliament members to extend the timeframe of the platform until the ‘rigorous readiness’ of a national body to take over the factory safety responsibilities.
