Despite a lot of do’s and don’ts in place now to improve workplace conditions of factories, the absence of an integrated checklist has been one of the key lacunae here. It, as the developments suggest, tends to thwart much of what is expected to be done on this front. Definite standards can be set up to address the problems through an integrated checklist for factories to abide by, and for authorities to monitor its compliance. The absence of such a checklist has, in fact, brought about discordant sets of criteria which are almost impossible to follow. Initially, when the issue of factory inspection came to the fore with real urgency, concerned quarters, including the government and the overseas retailers, were more interested in the basics — that too, in a vague manner disregarding the fundamentals of workplace conditions in factories. As a result, despite progress in upgrade of such conditions in factories over the years since the Rana Plaza catastrophe, things were not properly directed to meet the core goals — in other words, standards. Though belated, the move of the government, in collaboration with the International Labour Organisation (ILO), to formulate an integrated checklist for factory inspection will hopefully mitigate much of the disharmony in an attempt to achieve well-targeted goals. The policy, meant to ensure effective and prevention-oriented labour inspection and occupational safety, aims at bringing all industries under a comprehensive inspection system. Understandably, the thrust would initially be on the readymade garment (RMG) sector. This is particularly so, because the government is under serious pressure to come up with visible improvement in working conditions in factories to assure foreign stakeholders including rights bodies, trade unions and the buyers. The government in last December approved the checklist with the aim of developing an effective factory inspection system in line with the Labour Act. The attempted move is expected to address workplace safety and workers’ rights in 42 industrial sectors in Bangladesh. In the 42 industrial sectors, except some factories in the RMG sector, effective safety inspections were almost absent due to the absence of a specific checklist. Under the integrated checklist, 125 questions have reportedly been included under 12 heads in line with the provisions of the Bangladesh Labour Act-2006 and the Labour Rules-2015. Beside the questionnaire, factory inspectors would collect information on structural safety, structural drawing and design, information related to power sub-station and boilers in the factories. The Department of Inspection of Factories and Establishment (DIFE), the concerned agency of the government, has set a target of 20 factory inspections a month for each inspector under the integrated checklist. According to the DIFE statistics, the total number of registered factories across the country is 23,218. Of these, the RMG sector comprises little over five thousand. This figure, for obvious reasons, is on the lower side as the number of unregistered RMG units are far too many. And it is these unregistered production units that are believed to be very risk-prone and hazardous. So, the task of bringing in a new culture of factory safety must address all sectors of industrial production. This, no doubt, will entail formulating varying inspection requirements, depending on the scale and nature of production. However, all these may not see the light of the day if the competence and technical knowledge of the inspectors fall short of the requirement.
