The government has listed 52 more engineering firms to conduct detailed engineering assessment on fire and electrical faults in readymade garment factories under a national initiative to ensue engineering support for factories with the aim of expediting remediation works.In a recent circular the Department of Inspection for Factories and Establishments disclosed the names of the firms under which the factory authorities would have to develop fire and electrical remediation plans for their units.Earlier, the DIFE nominated 26 engineering firms for conducting structural DEA and 19 others for fire and electrical DEA.Factory owners filed compliant with the DIFE that they were facing problems for developing fire and electrical remediation designs as the government had selected very few firms for the task, Md Shamsuzzaman Bhuiyan, inspector general of DIFE told New Age on Monday.‘Against the backdrop we have made a decision at the meeting of the Task Force on Fire and Electrical DEA to nominate 52 more firms as the fire and electrical faults in the RMG factories are huge,’ he said.Shamsuzzaman hoped that the increased number of engineering firms would help factory owners to expedite remediation works in their units which inspected under ILO supported national action plan.Following the Rana Plaza building collapse in April 2013 that killed more than 1,100 people a total of 3,780 garment factories were assessed under the three initiatives — European retailers’ platform Accord, North American buyers’ platform Alliance and the government-led and ILO-supported national initiative.Out of the 3,780 garment factories, 1,549 were inspected under the national initiative. Of them, 531 were closed, 69 relocated and 193 transferred to Accord and Alliance lists.The factories that fell under the national initiative completed 32 per cent of remediation works, while 11 factories fixed 100 per cent safety faults, DIFE officials said.The government under the support of ILO formed a Remediation Coordination Cell to look into the remediation works in the factories assessed under national initiative.International Labour Organisation hired Bureau Veritas, an international testing, inspection and certification agency, to support the capacity of Remediation Coordination Cell while the government appointed 60 engineers in the RCC to expedite remediation works.
