The working conditions in the garment sector in Bangladesh have been among the worst in the global garment industry despite the fact that the country enjoyed relatively high economic growth over the past two decades due mainly to readymade garment exports, said a report of the International Labour Organisation released on Monday. The report ‘Bangladesh: Seeking better employment conditions for better socioeconomic outcomes’ put emphasis on the importance of improving working conditions in the RMG industry to achieve sustainable growth in the country.
The ILO research department prepared the report in consultation with the organisation’s tripartite constituents in Bangladesh.
The report said, ‘Unless a comprehensive set of labour market and social policies are introduced, the country will be unable to maintain its economic momentum and improve living standards in a sustainable way.’
According to the report, the country accounted for 4.8 per cent of the global apparel exports in 2011. The market share was only 0.6 per cent in 1990.
‘But unregulated industry growth has contributed to poor working conditions in that sector, which have acted as an obstacle to sustainable development and, moreover, resulted in some of the worst industrial disasters on record,’ it said.
Recent accidents have brought the issue of occupational health and safety risks in the Bangladeshi garment sector to world attention. The accidents include a factory fire in November 2012 that killed 117 workers and the collapse of Rana Plaza housing several RMG manufacturers in April 2013 that killed 1,129 workers — the latter being one of the worst industrial disasters on record, the report mentioned.
The report said, ‘In response to a surge in the demand for readymade garments from foreign companies, suppliers in Bangladesh have established factories and manufacturing sites without following building and safety codes and the government of Bangladesh has not provided adequate regulatory oversight and enforcement.’
According to the report, the garment workers in Bangladesh earn some of the lowest wages in the region and while other countries revise their minimum wages on an annual basis, Bangladesh has adjusted the RMG minimum wage only three times since it was first set in 1985.
The report said as of August 2013, the monthly minimum wage for entry-level workers in the garment sector was $39 per month — about half of the lowest rate in other major garment-exporting countries, such as Cambodia ($80), India ($71), Pakistan ($79), Sri Lanka ($73) and Vietnam ($78).
The report also mentioned that a wage board constituted this year is expected to make recommendations for a minimum wage increase shortly.
‘While poverty, according to the national estimates, has declined, many Bangladeshis do not earn enough to lead to sustained improvements in poverty. In fact, as of 2010, 76 per cent of the population lived on less than $2 a day — the highest share in terms of population in the region,’ the report showed.
Moreover, Bangladesh’s social protection coverage is among the lowest in the region and less than 10 per cent of all urban poor have access to social assistance, report said.
It also mentioned that between 2000 and 2010, when GDP growth averaged nearly 6 per cent, the employment rate fell 1.7 percentage points to stand at roughly 67 per cent in 2010.
In 2010, the gap between the youth and adult employment rates stood at roughly 20 percentage points and it has risen further in recent years and more troubling is the fact that unemployment increases with educational attainment, the report said.
The report pointed out that Bangladeshi migrants pay some of the highest recruiting fees in the region — the average cost per worker going abroad is 4.5 times higher than the annual GDP per capita.
Nonetheless, the shift from agriculture towards manufacturing and services has helped to reduce poverty facilitated by increased empowerment and participation of women, but the rate of poverty remains high and social protection coverage low, the report said.
The findings showed that as the garment industry expanded, employment in the manufacturing sector doubled from 12 per cent in 1985–86 to 24 per cent in 2010 but over the same period, the share of employment in the agricultural sector fell by approximately 27 percentage points.
To move forward the ILO report suggested improving employment prospects and working conditions, removing obstacles to investment in order to stimulate job creation, improving education and skills matching as well as special measures to address the high incidence of informality and to ensure that the transformation is inclusive and for measures to leverage migration and remittances for broader development objectives.
-With New Age input
