The Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, a platform of North American retailers, on Tuesday informed the government that it would make payments for workers’ wages for two months if any of the garment factories was closed as per the suggestion of the Alliance experts during safety inspections. The visiting chair of the Alliance, Ellen O Tauscher, made the announcement at a meeting with the government officials at the labour ministry in the capital.
Labour secretary Mikail Shipar, Department of Inspection for Factories and Establishments inspector general Syed Ahmed, Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association president Md Atiqul Islam, visiting members of the board of directors of the Alliance and representative of International Labour Organisation attended the meeting.
The Alliance team demanded clarification from Bangladesh side about the media report that the Alliance and Accord, the platform of European retailers, are closing garment factories in Bangladesh during the safety inspections, a meeting source said.
The alliance chief urged the government to clear the issue that retailers groups had no authority to shut any factory and if they found any immediate risk in any building they could only suggest for closure and necessary remediation, according to the source.
Explaining the matter, a government high official told the meeting that the manufacturers, mainly the BGMEA, repeatedly said that the Alliance and the Accord had been shutting down factories during safety inspections and most of the media ran report according to the information provided by the BGMEA.
‘From the government side we clarified our stance on the issue as we are with the process and we know only chief inspector as the authority to shut down the factory — not Alliance or Accord,’ Mikail Shipar told New Age after the meeting.
He said, ‘We have achieved a good thing from the meeting that the Alliance chief announced if any garment factory is shut down as per the recommendation of its experts due to safety reason, the platform will pay workers for two months.’
Alliance board members arrived in Dhaka on April 14 to discuss the progresses of the commitments which were made after the Rana Plaza collapse and the progress of ongoing safety inspections.
The Alliance and the Accord undertook a five-year plan on Bangladesh factory safety following the Rana Plaza building collapse on April 24 which killed 1,135 people.
The two initiative started inspections of about 2,200 factories in Bangladesh from where they procure their products from February this year.
With the suspension of production in the factories — Four Wings Limited, Attune Garments and Natural Apparel — at Mirpur in the capital on Friday, the number of total factories closed temporarily reached 10 in Dhaka and Chittagong. Two more factories were also closed partially for structural faults.
-With New Age input
