Garment exporters are in hectic negotiations with international buyers to retain market as pressure on buyers from their respective country mounts following the collapse of
the building that housed five clothing factories at Savar.
More than three hundred bodies, mainly apparel workers, were recovered by Saturday from the rubble of the building that collapsed on Wednesday morning. More than a thousand were injured.
Rights groups and the media in different countries have launched protests again against international retailers such as Walmart, Gap, H&M, Benetton, Mango, Joe Fresh, Primark and C&A for taking cheap clothes from Bangladesh at the expense of lives of hundreds of poor workers.
They said that global brands continued to look for ways to race to the bottom on prices of products which involves cutting corners on health and safety.
‘The prices that they [global retailers] pay, they assure us, are enough to pay workers enough to live on and keep factories in tip top condition. But, faced with constantly decreasing incomes, factory owners inevitably let things slide, like replacing faulty machinery or fixing worrying building subsidence,’ wrote Anna McMullen, a campaigner for Labour Behind the Label, in a CNN write-up.
Leaders of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association said that they were continuously updating the buyers about the Savar building collapse.
The building, Rana Plaza, housed five garments that have links with a number of international retailers.
The BGMEA, which is also under pressure within the country for failing to ensure work-place safety, assigned one of its vice president Shahidullah Azim to negotiate with the buyers and convince them about the steps the association will take to stop such kind of incident in future, they said.
The garment exporters feared that the export order would fall because of the negative impact of the Savar tragedy as the buyers were now shaky in placing order in Bangladesh fearing backlash at home.
Labour groups in the United States on Friday distributed photos showing that they had discovered garments with labels from JC Penney and El Corte Inglés, the Spanish retailer, at the site of the collapse, reports New York Times on Friday.
Seeking to press American retailers to do more to assure factory safety in Bangladesh, dozens of worker advocates held protests on Thursday at the Gap’s headquarters in San Francisco and at a Walmart store in Renton, Wash, it said.
In London, rights activists held demonstration outside Primark’s flagship store on Saturday demanding full compensation, including loss of earnings, to the injured workers and the families of those who lost their lives in Savar tragedy, and action to prevent any future disasters.
Primark is at loggerheads with campaigning organisations over signing up to an action plan that will prevent building collapses in Bangladesh.
NGOs have called on Primark, whose supplier Simple Approach occupied the second floor of the eight-storey Rana Plaza building that collapsed, to sign up to the Bangladesh Fire and Safety Agreement but the company has shown little interest in signing the agreement.
The Savar incident has also shaken the Canadian retailers as the country’s clothing line Joe Fresh, sold in Loblaw stores, was among the customers of the factories operating in the Savar building and has faced fierce customer backlash this week, reports Canadian national news agency The Canadian Press.
Loblaw said it would send its senior officials to Bangladesh in the wake the building collapse.
The company will also be one of several major Canadian retailers to take part in an ‘urgent’ meeting Monday with the Retail Council of Canada.
The retail council’s president and CEO wouldn’t confirm what other companies will be involved in the meeting, other than to say it will be a strong
representation of retailers across the country, including those who usually
participate in the council’s responsible trade committee.
‘We will be looking at what are the efforts that have been made and what else needs to be done? Where do we need to put pressure? We will also be discussing these issues with the federal government,’ said a senior executive of the company.
Senior representatives from Loblaw’s supply chain team will meet local officials in Bangladesh to get ‘a precise response on what caused this tragedy,’ the company said in a statement late Friday.
‘We are committed to finding an approach that ensures safe working conditions, drives lasting change in the industry and help prevents other tragedies,’ spokeswoman Julija Hunter said in the statement.
One of Canada’s highest profile labour groups criticised the Canadian government on Friday for being silent about previous labour violations in Bangladesh.
The federal government is ‘thus complicit in the recent tragic event,’ said a statement from the Canadian Labour Congress.
Safety audit measures were obviously lacking or not enforced by the Bangladeshi company involved in the latest tragedy, CLC president Ken Georgetti said in the statement.
‘Unfortunately, Canada is visibly absent from international discussions to reform current social auditing systems, and to impose accountable reporting standards on companies such as Loblaws, which buy products from other countries.’
Canada and other countries should be more aggressive in pushing for a strong and enforceable system of workplace health and safety in Bangladesh, Georgetti said.
BGMEA president Md Atiqul Islam on Friday told New Age that the building collapse incident at Saver largely affected the image of the country in abroad following devastating Tazreen factory fire five months back.
Former BGMEA vice-president Siddiqur Rahman said that they feared that the buyers would now be hesitant in placing orders in Bangladesh.
‘I have started my work and have already contacted with a number of buyers like C&A and H&M’, Shahidullah Azim said while talking to New Age on Saturday.
He said the Saver tragedy would take a long time to overcome the consequence as the country was yet to overcome the effect of the Tazreen Fashions fire.
‘Buyers are closely monitoring that what kinds of measure we are taking over the situation and we are trying to convince them,’ Azim said.
The US newspaper Washington Post on Saturday said Bangladesh’s economic outlook had darkened after the Savar incident.
‘Even before Bangladesh’s Rana Plaza building collapsed this week, killing at least 300 garment workers, the country’s $19 billion clothing-export industry was feeling the
pressure of a worsening confrontation between prime minister Sheikh Hasina and her political enemies,’ it said.
Western buyers’ patience had already begun to fray. Many garment manufacturers believe that the Rana Plaza tragedy, coupled with the threat of more disruptive political turmoil ahead, will prompt retailers such as Walmart gradually to shift production away from Bangladesh, the second-largest garment exporter in the world after China, it said.
-With New Age input
