Launching the book Celebrating 50 years of Bangladesh and sharing his experience of staying and working in Bangladesh before and after the Rana Plaza building collapse, German author Daniel Seidl stated Bangladeshi garment factories are one of the safest workplaces in the world.
On the eve of the building collapse, Seidl, the then Executive Director of the Bangladesh-German Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BGCCI), was leading a big German business delegation in Dhaka, highlighting Bangladesh’s economic transformation. However, it was on the next morning (24 April 2013) that the country’s deadliest industrial accident took place, which led German entities seeking to withdraw business from Bangladesh citing reputational risks even as Seidl urged them to stay put, reasoning Bangladesh had already invested a lot in the garment sector and the retailers and brands had also benefited from the competitive price and quality products offered by the country.
“It should not be a blame game and it should be a common game. Many people always talk about the negatives and I say you should be positive about Bangladesh. We need to grow together,” says Seidl, who considers Bangladesh his second home having spent around 25 years here.
From that ill-fated day in 2013 to 2022, Bangladesh has made a complete turnaround in terms of remediation and workplace safety.
As things stand now…
Launched in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, measures like Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety and the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety led to the closure of hundreds of unsafe, bottom-tier factories but at the same time resulted in scaling-up of remediation in thousands of others.
These steps helped restore Bangladesh’s attractiveness in the global apparel-sourcing market, leading to more than a decade of rapid growth and development.
Hong Kong-based supply chain compliance solutions provider QIMA ranked Bangladesh as the second highest ethical manufacturing country in its report QIMA Q1 2021 Barometer, which included performance against parameters like hygiene, health and safety, child and young labour, labour practices including forced labour, worker representation, disciplinary practices and discrimination, working hours and wages and waste management.
“In addition, the progresses made in the areas of cleaner and greener manufacturing testifies to the industry’s commitment and actions toward building sustainable supply chain,” maintained a proud BGMEA, the apex garment makers’ body adding the study was conducted at a time when Covid disrupted the global fashion industry and supply chain, underlining such level of compliance testifies to the industry’s resilience and commitment.
“While we commit ourselves to maintain the social and safety standards, we have aligned with global pledges like reducing GHG emission by 30 per cent till 2030. Through these actions and transformation, Bangladesh has well positioned itself as the preferred sourcing partner…,” BGMEA proclaimed, and rightly so as the country is home to highest number of LEED-certified green factories — 144 LEED green factories certified by USGBC, of which 41 are platinum rated — thereby earning the confidence of the global brands and consumers.
To put it in a word, the transformation since the Rana Plaza incident is exemplary. All thanks to the stakeholders for this rare achievement with each one playing their respective roles to perfection. If the buyers came up with the initiatives like Accord and Alliance to push the remediation agenda strongly, suppliers complemented the efforts by investing heavily in remediation exercise.
It’s a different story though that even after leaving Bangladesh for good, Accord went into effect again in September last year!
Buyers’ bodies-affiliated units make the cut
“Safety renovations generated by the Accord across 1,600 factories have made conditions safer for more than two million workers,” claimed Executive Director of the Worker Rights Consortium, Scott Nova, adding, “Participation by additional retailers would bring this life-saving programme to cover thousands more workers in Bangladesh and could help ensure its expansion to other countries.”
Meanwhile, according to a study, Challenges of Industrial Safety in the Post-Accord-Alliance Era: Is the Institutionalisation Process Slowing Down?, carried out by Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), neither Accord-nor Alliance had been able to complete 100 per cent remediation of all their member factories till 2018 even as it added electrical and fire related problems were mostly resolved (96 per cent and 93 per cent respectively for the two platforms) by the end of 2018.
Henceforth the home-grown RSC carried forward the remediation work to a great extent.
But even as the garment manufacturing units associated with the buyers’ bodies have achieved the desired level of remediation; what about those that are not part of the same?
Worries creep in as others are found wanting
If latest reports are something to go by, factories which were inspected under the joint initiative of the Bangladesh Government and the International Labour Organisation have made only around 48 per cent progress in remediation in the last six years even as a total of 1,549 factories were inspected under the national initiative, backed by the ILO and funded by the Governments of Canada, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, after the Rana Plaza building collapse.
After completing the inspections under the national initiative in December 2015, the Government repeatedly set deadlines for fixing safety faults but most of the factories showed little response and to expedite the remediation, the Government established the Remediation Coordination Cell (RCC) in 2017.
Meanwhile, as per the Labour Inspection Report 2020-21, 793 out of 1,549 factories are now active and the units have made 48 per cent progress in remediation as of July 2021 while of the total number of factories, 630 were closed, 100 relocated and 14 shifted to the Accord and Alliance lists.
The report said that 535 factories had completed less than 50 per cent of the remediation work, 95 factories had progressions between 50 per cent to 70 per cent and 94 factories had achieved more than 70 per cent to 80 per cent progress.
The slow rate of remediation has now emerged as a matter of concern for the industry, which otherwise boasts of good achievements in terms of overall remediation.
The RCC has in the meanwhile, identified seven challenges in completing the remediation work at the factories assessed under National Initiative of which, the major ones are incapability of the factories in carrying out remediation work, and majority of the units being located in rented buildings and operated under sub-contracts.
It also identified non-cooperation from shared or rented building owners, reluctance of factory owners towards remediation work due to lack of export opportunity and lack of awareness regarding workplace safety as the main challenges.
The CPD study further underlined industrial safety in the RMG sector has been passing through a critical stage with lack of proper coordination and proper monitoring and enforcement while adding post-Accord-Alliance period of safety related activities in the RMG sector could not maintain the standards of that of Accord-Alliance period while adding a major focus of the post-Accord-Alliance period should be to complete the institutionalization process of industrial safety in the apparel sector and give it a shape of sustainability while also advocating two-pronged approach in order to address the challenges with focus first being on strengthening the monitoring and enforcement capacity of existing organisations, maintaining transparency and accountability.
Given remediation is predominantly a buyer-driven exercise, lack of suppliers’ keenness to participate in such a costly and time-consuming endeavour with little tangible business returns is understandable but at the same time Bangladesh can ill-afford to compromise on anything that might impact the country’s standing and repute as the preferred sourcing destination.
