Govt mulls legal actions if order ignored
The Department of Inspection for Factories and Establishments has asked over 600 unauthorised RMG factories across the country to get approval as soon as possible.
It also warned that legal actions would be taken if the order was ignored, said officials concerned. The DIFE also asked its 23 offices across the country to find out the factories in all sectors that were operating illegally and to push them to get licence.
‘The primary notice has already been served to the authorities of every illegal garment factory to come under the legal framework in shortest possible time,’ Syed Ahmed, inspector general of the DIFE, told New Age recently.
‘If the factory authorities fail to take steps in time, the DIFE will serve further notice with a timeframe to come under the legal framework. If the authorities ignore the second notice, they will have to face legal action,’ he said.
Ahmed said no factory or establishment could run its activities illegally in any sector as the government was committed to ensure workers’ rights and workplace safety.
The DIFE chief said, ‘We have asked the officials of 23 district offices to beef up the follow-up monitoring on unauthorised factories and to file cases against the factories that will ignore the notice.’
The DIFE, earlier, could not monitor the unauthorised factories properly due to lack of human resource but now the government is strict on the issue, he said.
‘To ensure proper monitoring the DIFE will appoint 10 information technology experts and the process of the recruitment of additional factory inspectors is going on,’ Ahmed added.
Another DIFE official said after the fire incident at Tazreen Fashions and the Rana Plaza building collapse, the DIFE inspectors assessed that there were 3,498 garment factories in operation across the country.
Out of 3,498, more than 600 factories are operating without getting licence from the government and all of the factories are doing subcontracting, he said.
According to the DIFE official, the unauthorised factories are running their production without complying with the existence labour law and maintaining safety standard.
-With New Age input
