Forums of Western apparel brands and retailers have threatened to cut business relations with their Bangladeshi supplier factories in which collapsible gates at exits still exist. Senior officials of Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, a platform of North American buyers, said the platform recently issued a seven-day ultimatum to the factory owners to remove the collapsible gates. ‘The deadline ended in the first week of this month and now we are verifying whether the supplier factories have removed collapsible gates from exit points or not,’ an Alliance official told New Age on Sunday. According to the Bangladesh National Building Code, all exit access doors must be of a side-swinging type. Sliding or hanging must not be used as means of exit and all exit doors must be openable from the side without use of a key.After finalising the corrective action plan the factory owners got time up to one year and three months to remove collapsible gates from the exits but most of the factory owners did not remove those, the Alliance official said. He said that recently the authorities of a number of the supplier factories sent to the Alliance still photos and videos that showed collapsible gates from the exits at their units were removed.Officials of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association said that the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, a platform of EU brands and retailers, also warned the factory owners over the issue. After warnings from the Accord and the Alliance, a good number of factories removed the collapsible gates from the exit points but all the factories could not install fire doors, the BGMEA officials said.Recently, the BGMEA held separate meetings with the Accord and the Alliance on the issue of collapsible gates at the main entrance of the factories.‘The Accord agreed that a door which swings to the outside, is not lockable to prevent way out and has a panic bar assembly, is required at all exits including main entries,’ Mahmud Hassan Khan Babu, vice-president of the BGMEA, told New Age. The Accord also agreed the door does not necessarily have to be a listed fire door depending on the exit plan of the building, he said. The BGMEA and the Accord also agreed that factory owners could preserve sliding and lockable style entry gates provided a separate outward swinging, non-lockable for egress door with panic bar assembly was installed in the exit area, Babu said. After the Rana Plaza building collapse, which killed more than 1,100 people, mostly garment workers, in April 2013, North American retailers formed the Alliance and European retailers formed the Accord undertaking a five-year plan which set timeframes and accountability for inspections and training and workers’ empowerment programmes in Bangladesh. Under the plan, the Alliance inspected more than 700 factories while the Accord inspected about 2,300 units.

Commerce Minister Tofail Ahmed on Sunday said the government has already ensured the rights of all workers, especially in Ready Made Garments (RMG) sector aiming to create a congenial environment in factories and accelerate the economy as well. “The government has amended the Labour Law to establish their rights,” he told journalists after emerging from a meeting with a five-member delegation of International Labour Organisation (ILO) led by Elizabeth Faith Onuko, Kenyan Minister Counsellor (Labour) to the United Nations, at his secretariat office, according to a release. During the meeting, they discussed various issues including labour rights of the country’s apparel factories. The government has taken various steps including closing the defective factories, establishing international level green industry, forming workers welfare association and ensuring full wages for the labour to make smooth and worker’s friendly environment in the factories, the minister said. He also said the government has taken initiatives to set up 100 special economic zones having all sorts of facilities for investors from both home and abroad to make the country as an investment hub. He said various envoys in Dhaka including those of European Union and United State expressed satisfaction to visit the country’s apparel factories. Among others, Senior Secretary of Commerce Ministry Hedayetullah Al Mamoon and Additional Secretary of the ministry M Shawkat Hossain Waresi were present.

The progress achieved in the upgradation of readymade garment (RMG) factories, in terms of safety and security of workers, taken under the Alliance, a group of North American buyers, reportedly has been slow. The Alliance started the work on improving the safety standard of its selected factories some months after the collapse of the Rana Plaza in 2013. A report published by the Alliance late last week said full remediation of only 24 out of the 677 factories on its work list could be accomplished under its programme scheduled to be completed in June 2018. Undeniably, there exists a lack of interest on the part of a section of owners of garment units to make investments in improving the safety standard of their factories. But some other factors, including, among others, political unrest, lack of qualified engineers, problems with the import of safety equipment and absence of consistent and clearly-set criteria for the purpose of standardisation have largely contributed to the delay in the remediation work. But amidst ‘unsatisfactory’ progress in remediation work, there was at least one positive development — a remarkable drop in the number of fire incidents in garment factories in the country. In 2012, there were 250 officially recorded garment factory fires that took lives of 115 people. In contrast, there were just five fire incidents in 2015 and not a single life was lost in those. The decline in the number of fire incidents with no loss of life serves as a pointer to a growing awareness among apparel industry people and workers about the need for preventing the accident. The collapse of a multi-storied building due to construction faults is a rare incident. But the fire incidents are not. Such incidents can be prevented to a great extent with appropriate safety measures in place. The Alliance with due support from the government has been asking the RMG unit owners to accomplish that task diligently. In addition to ensuring fire safety measures, a number of factories are in need of physical remediation and relocation. The Alliance has been encouraging the owners of the factories from which its constituents are sourcing apparels to do the needful. But not all owners have been reported to be interested primarily because of the additional expenditure involved in doing that. The Alliance has already severed its ties with a number of errant factories. Besides, it has imparted fire safety training to thousands of workers and security guards of the RMG sector. The Alliance and another identical entity known as Accord have been trying to improve the safety situation in the apparel industry in Bangladesh. It is hard to say that the owners are extending all possible cooperation to both. Rather, on a number of occasions, they have vented their resentment over the operations of the two buyers’ representative bodies and a few government policymakers have also joined them. However, such resentment is a natural outcome when any attempt is made to discipline or streamline any errant group. But all concerned need to understand the fact that the buyers coming under pressure from the consumers and the rights groups at home have been engaged in improving the safety standard of apparel factories here. Buyers have not withdrawn from Bangladesh despite some major factory accidents. The growth in apparel exports during the past couple of years is a testimony to that fact. So, instead of opposing their move to improve safety situation, the factory owners should extend all possible cooperation to them.

Rafique Khan, who used to work at one of the five garment factories housed at the ill-fated Rana Plaza, set up a small grocery shop in Savar with the compensation money he received.He was rescued in an unconscious state 19 hours after the building caved in on April 24, 2013, and after seven days of treatment, he regained his consciousness.“I am lucky that I survived and could start my own business with nearly Tk 9 lakh as capital,” he said.Khan is among the 51.8 percent of the respondents in a survey on Rana Plaza survivors who said that they have somewhat rebuilt their lives three years after the tragic event and have become gainfully employed again.

ActionAid Bangladesh, a global development partner, conducted the survey in March this year on 1,300 survivors and 500 relatives of the deceased. The findings of the survey were shared yesterday at a discussion on the Rana Plaza tragedy, at the capital’s Brac Centre Inn. The survey found that unemployment rate has gradually declined over the last three years and the employment rate steadily increasing.Still, 48.2 percent of the survivors are unemployed three years on.Among the currently employed, 21.4 percent are employed in garment factories, 23.2 percent are involved in petty business and 16.8 percent are working as tailors. Like Khan, 3 percent run grocery shops. Some 4.2 percent are engaged in wage labour and 4.9 percent in agriculture. Aside from these, survivors are engaged in other types of income-generating activities as household help, salesperson, auto-rickshaw driver and mobile-phone repairer.Those who are unemployed cited physical weakness (56.5 percent) and mental weakness (34.1 percent) as the main reasons for not being gainfully employed.Some 41.1 percent of the survivors said their family income is between Tk 5,000 and Tk 10,000 a month, and 30.1 percent said it is between Tk 10,000 and Tk 15,000 and 14.8 percent between Tk 15,000 and Tk 20,000. Only 6.5 percent of the respondents said they have monthly income of Tk 20,000 and more.“Evidence shows that the overall income of survivors is increasing compared to their income in 2013, 2014 and 2015. ”In the survey, 78.8 percent of the survivors said their physical condition is more or less stable and 14.6 percent reported that it is deteriorating, listing headache, difficulty in movement, and pain in hand, leg and back, as some of the major problems.Some 58.4 percent of the respondents said they are still suffering from long-term psycho-social difficulties, 37.3 percent are more or less stable and only 4.3 percent have recovered fully.“ After around three years of the incident, trauma in the survivors, though not severe, still exists,” said the report. With regards to monthly expenditure, 61.1 percent is spent on food, 15.5 percent on house rent, 12.4 percent on children’s education and 8.4 percent on treatment.For most of the relatives of dead workers, the major items of expenditure are food and children’s education.As a discussant, Khondaker Golam Moazzem, additional director of research at the Centre for Policy Dialogue, suggested introduction of special health cards for the survivors so that they can get free services from government hospitals.“The survivors could not invest their money as the amount was not given at a time. They were given in phases and they spent most of the money for paying their previous loans and in meeting daily needs,” he added.The victims received compensation from the government, the foreign retailers and donor agencies. The survey found that 33 percent of the monetary support received by the survivors was spent on paying back debts, 49 percent on food and other household essentials including treatment. Only 16 percent went to savings and investment, particularly in small business, land and cattle.While moderating the discussion, Farah Kabir, country director of ActionAid Bangladesh, called for proper payment of the victim’s compensation. “While the compensation issue has been resolved to a large extent, the long drawn-out process undermines the usefulness of the support,” the report said. ActionAid recommended a proper compensation mechanism, strengthening of the factory inspection department for streamlining the process of providing permits for setting up factories. It also called for ensuring that the ‘true spirit’ of ‘freedom of association’ prevails by adequately empowering the trade unions to collectively bargain for their rights.