The Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association is reluctant to stop issuing utilisation declaration (UD) to its noncompliant member factories despite repeated instructions from the Department of Inspection for Factories and Establishments. The DIFE sent two letters to the BKMEA, requesting the trade body to stop issuing the UD to 120 factories as the factories, which was assessed under a national initiative, failed to make satisfactory progress in fixing safety faults. On December 29 last year, the department sent a letter to the BKMEA, asking it to stop providing the UD to 46 member factories over noncompliance. Earlier on September 20, the DIFE had issued the first letter to the BKMEA and asked it to stop providing the UD to 74 factories in which remediation progress was not satisfactory. But the trade body is yet to comply with the DIFE directions, DIFE officials said. After getting the DIFE letter, the BKMEA sent letters to its errant members, giving one week for starting remediation and informing the trade body about their status. The DIFE on January 5 sent a letter to the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, requesting it to suspend issuance of the UD to 143 member factories for three months as the authorities of the units had failed to start safety remediation work. After three days of the issuance of the letter, the BGMEA suspended issuance of the UD to 84 factories. ‘We are yet to stop issuing the UD to any factory as we have sent letters to the factories giving one week to start remediation work,’ Mohammad Hatem, first vice-president of the BKMEA, told New Age on Sunday. He said that a good number of factories out of 46 units had already discussed the matter with the DIFE and started remediation work. ‘The BKMEA would stop issuing the UD to the factories, which would fail to start remediation within a short time,’ Hatem said. 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 three initiatives — European retailers’ platform the Accord, North American buyers’ platform the 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 the Accord and Alliance lists. The factories that fell under the national initiative had completed 32 per cent of the remediation work while 11 factories had fixed 100 per cent of the safety faults, DIFE officials said.
