The Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety has engaged the University of Texas to identify the effectiveness of its worker training on fire safety for garment factory workers in Bangladesh. Alliance, a platform of 26 retailers and brands of North America formed after the Rana Plaza building collapse, on Thursday said in a press release that the team of the University of Texas would conduct a study led by Hasanat Alamgir, associate professor of occupational health, to assess the impact of worker training programmes conducted by the buyers’ group.
‘The team will conduct a research study to yield valid and reliable results, collect data through randomised surveys and focus groups from workers, and ultimately deliver a detailed report on the effectiveness of the Alliance’s worker training,’ the release said.
Alliance expected that the study report of the TU team would help identify areas of improvement as the Alliance training programmes would continue and expand in the coming years.
As part of the UT assessment, Alamgir will also collaborate with and mentor a team of faculty and graduate students at Dhaka University to build local capacity for impact assessment research.
By engaging UT, Alliance aims to assess the impact of its own worker training programme and to help establish best practices in factory worker safety training that can be used across manufacturing industries in Bangladesh and beyond, according to the release.
In February this year, Alliance conducted a baseline survey among 3,200 randomly selected workers from 28 factories to identify gaps in worker knowledge of fire safety practices and found that only 39 per cent of workers could correctly identify what to do in case of emergency and only two per cent could identify five common fire hazards.
The survey had been conducted as per the suggestion of Alamgir, Alliance said.
Following the baseline survey the buyers’ group delivered safety training to more than 1.1 million factory managers, workers, and security personnel in Bangladesh and surveys among workers showed that the training had put a significant positive impact on their knowledge of fire safety.
-With New Age input
