Alliance Insepction
2 more RMG units partially closed
The government-set review committee on Saturday asked the authorities of two garment factories — Benhid Apparels and Love Craft Garments — to close parts of their factories as inspection teams of North American retailers’ group found the factory buildings unsafe.
The factories are located in the Dhaka city.Inspection teams of the Alliance for Bangladesh Workers Safety had found structural flaws in six garment factories in Dhaka and Chittagong and had sent the list to the review committee for the next course of action.
The review committee comprising representatives from the government, Accord on Fire and Building Safety, Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, BUET and the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association visited the factories and asked the authorities of Benhid Apparels and Love Craft Garments to evacuate top floors of six-storey buildings of the companies.
The units where Alliance found structural flaws are Benhid Apparels, Bonny Apparels, Global Merchants, Love Craft Garments and Ashiana Garments Industries in the Dhaka city and Artistic Apparels Ltd in Chittagong.
‘We have asked the authorities of Benhid Apparels to vacate top floor of its building and to remove structure from the rooftop of the building. The authorities of Love Craft Garments have been asked to vacate top floor and a particular corner of each floor of the factory building due to safety risk,’ Syed Ahmed, inspector general of the Department of Inspection for Factories and Establishments, told New Age on Saturday.
The review committee has asked the authorities of Artistic Apparels Ltd in Chittagong to minimise load and to vacate a limited portion of the factory buildings, he said.
Syed Ahmed, also the chairperson of the review committee, said the authorities of all six factories had been asked to conduct detail engineering analysis of the factory buildings within six weeks.
The authorities of Ethical Garments located at Sabujbagh in the capital have already vacated its top four floors of its nine-storey building as per the suggestion of Accord, the platform of EU retailers.
Syed said though Accord had sent the name of the factory to the review committee for its action, the committee did not visit the factory as the retailers’ group informed that the company had already comply with the recommendation of Accord’s engineers.
According to a recent statistics of the DIFE, 25 garment factories have so far been closed and 11 factories partially shut down under the inspection programmes of the EU and North American buyers’ groups.
The review panel visited 53 factories in the last six months following the recommendations of Accord and Alliance and 25 garment factories have so far been closed and 11 factories partially shut down.
After the Rana Plaza building collapse last year that killed more than 1,100 people, mostly garment workers, North American apparel companies, retailers and brands formed Alliance and EU retailers formed Accord to improve safety in the Bangladeshi RMG factories.
Alliance has completed its inspection in 600 units listed by it by July and Accord has so far inspected about 900 factories.
The EU retailers’ group is expected to complete its inspection at about 1,600 factories by September.
-With New Age input
