Minister hopes US would resume GSP facility in 6 months
Readymade garments sector leaders and researchers at a roundtable on Sunday said it was high time to work with the buyers and retailers of the RMG products on the compliance issue to ensure safe and proper working condition for the garment workers.
At the roundtable ‘Garment Sector of Bangladesh: Prospect, Problems, Challenges and Way out’ organised by Shippers Council Bangladesh at the Daily Star conference hall in the city, they said compliance with some social issues improved in the garment sector in the last one decade but the infrastructural compliance did not improve properly.
Civil aviation and tourism minister Mohammad Faruk Khan said the garment sector faced huge infrastructural problem due to its rapid growth.
‘We are hopeful that the USA would resume the GSP facility for Bangladesh within the next six months.’
Faruk Khan said the US decision might be an outcome of a conspiracy as Bangladesh was in competition with a number of countries in the sector.
Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association president Atiqul Islam said, ‘We are improving labour standard as well as the compliance day by day.’
High interest rate of bank loans and high price of land are the main problems in relocating the non-compliant factories to the industrial zone after making them compliant, he said.
Atiq said the suspension of GSP facility in the US market was an outcome of a conspiracy and an overreaction of the USA to the working condition in Bangladesh.
‘We have to work with all other stakeholders to resolve the current crisis in the RMG sector.’
Khondaker Golam Moazzem, additional research director of the Centre for Policy Dialogue, pointed out seven major challenges for the readymade garment sector including unmatched growth of export order and complaint standard, weakness in physical infrastructure, institutional weakness, misconception about cost for maintaining compliance and slow progresses in workers safety and security issue in the keynote paper.
He said that ensuring workers rights particularly workplace safety and trade union rights would be considered to be important to address the challenges.
Moazzem suggested that non-complaint and risky factories should be identified immediately and to give them a timeframe for taking necessary steps in this regard.
Economist MM Akash said he did not think that the country’s garment sector was in risk, rather it was under threat of risk.
He said, ‘The sector will face risk if the workers take streets for their wages and benefits, political turmoil and frequent hartal take place and the major export destination EU suspends GSP facility for Bangladesh.’
Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies senior research fellow Nazneen Ahmed said alongside long-term action plan the government and the BGMEA should implement short-term plan including wage hike.
She suggested that the government and the factory owners should work with the buyers on the compliance issue.
Shippers Council of Bangladesh chairman Nasiruddin Ahmed Chowdhury, vice-chairman Md Rezaul Karim, former president of Chittagong Chamber of Commerce and Industry Farid Ahmed Chowdhury, Jatiya Shromik Jote president Shirin Akhter and Sammilita Garment Sramik Federation president Nazma Akhter also spoke on the occasion.
-With New Age input
