The government has initiated a move for setting up ‘industrial safety unit’ under the Department of Inspection for Factories and Establishments with the aim of ensuring safe working condition in all industrial sectors. ‘We are going to submit a proposal with the manpower organogram of industrial safety unit to the public administration ministry. The unit will fully take over the responsibility of safety monitoring of the industrial sector,’ The DIFE inspector general Md Shamsuzzaman Bhuiyan told New Age on Sunday.He said that the unit would be formed with the highest 150 manpower and it would be dedicated for conducting safety inspection and factory remediation in the industries.‘In association with the International Labour Organisation, we have formed remediation coordination cell to fix the safety faults in the readymade garment factories which was inspected under national action plan but the industrial safety unit would be responsible for all sectors,’ Shamsuzzaman said.He said that to expedite remediation work in the factories under national initiative the labour ministry started the process to recruit 60 engineers for one year and the finance ministry has already agreed in principle to allocate Tk 8 crore for salaries and other allowances of the engineers.As per the promise, the ILO also floated tender for hiring engineering firm from where the international organisation would recruit 47 engineers to support RRC.The government recruiting process would be completed by June 15 and the recruitment of ILO would take time up to July this year.‘Once the RMG factories remediation is completed, the RCC will be obsolete. And we have to strengthen the industrial safety unit as a permanent initiative for monitoring industrial safety,’ Shamsuzzaman said.The DIFE chief said, ‘So far as I know the RCC was established for completing remediation in the RMG factories inspected under national initiative. Most probably, the cell would not take the responsibility of the post-remediation safety monitoring of factories listed with Accord and Alliance.’According to the DIFE sources, 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 retailer platform Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, North American buyers’ platform Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety and the government-led and ILO-supported national initiative.Out of 3,780 garment factories, 1,549 inspected under the national initiative, out of which 531 were closed, 69 relocated and 193 shifted to the Accord and Alliance lists.The DIFE officials said that factories listed with the national initiative completed 30 per cent of remediation works while 11 factories fixed 100per cent safety faults.
