Plans to complete inspection by April, 2014
The Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh on Thursday made public a list of nearly 1,600 factories covered by the pact, employing more than 2 million workers, a key step toward improving safety in the garment industry by making its supply chain more transparent.
The organisation represents global brands, including Hennes & Mauritz, Zara parent Inditex, Tommy Hilfiger parent PVH and Italy’s Benetton, reports Wall Street Journal.
Key data points include factory name and address, the number of stories of each structure, whether a building includes multiple apparel factories and whether it houses other types of businesses, the number of workers at each factory, and the number of Accord signatories using each factory, said an Accord statement.
Accord interim executive director Sean Ansett said, ‘This is not merely a list of factory names; it includes crucial information on the physical structure of factories. These data points provide an unprecedented map of the Bangladesh apparel industry covered by the Accord and are playing a key role in prioritising factories for safety inspections.’
The Accord also indicated that it would announce in the coming days the hiring of the chief safety inspector who would oversee the initiative’s factory inspection and renovation programme.
The publication of the list reflects a growing belief that the garment industry’s chronic safety problems can only be fixed through a group effort, read the WSJ report.
Most factories take orders from multiple retailers. In recent months, retailers have found their calls for factories to fix their potential dangers are much more effective when they band together.
Yet the list also opens the retailers up to scrutiny. Many garment orders in Bangladesh are illegally subcontracted to unauthorized factories, which are often not inspected for safety violations and workers’ rights abuses. Though many retailers have codes of conduct that prohibit unauthorised subcontracting, unions and workers’ rights groups say many subtly condone it because it allows them to get their products on time.
Only authorised factories appear on the accord’s list and will benefit from the group’s commitment to inspect and fix factories it works with.
The Accord will launch a new website on October 7, on which the factory data — sent today to journalists and key stakeholders — will be posted for easy public access.
Dozens of mostly European retailers formed the accord in May. It legally requires them to help finance repairs at unsafe factories, and to stop working with factories that don’t make essential repairs. Yet the accord competes with another safety pact established during the summer, led by American retailers such as Walmart and Gap.
The two competing safety pacts are trying to determine how to coordinate efforts at factories where they are both present. ‘Once they publish their list, we’ll be able to cross-check,’ said Andy York, who represents the retailers on the accord’s steering committee.
The accord set a July deadline for its retailer signatories to disclose their suppliers. It was a stark change of course for most brands, who in the past tightly guarded the names of their suppliers, considering them trade secrets. H&M and Nike were two rare retailers that already published the names of their factories world-wide on their web sites.
York said the accord would focus its early inspections on multipurpose buildings and structures that weren’t built to be factories. The group has committed to completing safety inspections by next April.
In a recent meeting in Dhaka, Accord officials said they would start the safety inspection in November.
That task will largely fall to the accord’s soon-to-be-hired safety inspector, whose nomination will be announced in the coming days, York said.
-With New Age input
