RMG UnitS Inspection Manual
Tripartite body relaxes some BNBC, fire act clauses
The National Tripartite Committee has prepared an operating manual for assessing structural integrity and fire and electrical safety of readymade garments buildings, allowing relaxation in some laws of the Bangladesh National Building Code and the fire act.
EU Accord and North American Alliance recently signed an agreement on the operating manual of common standards.
A source involved with the process told New Age that the operating manual had been prepared based on the BNBC and others laws of the land, but the NTC allowed relaxation in some existing laws for the inspection of the existing factory buildings.
He said that the committee set 60 metres of travel distance for a worker up to stairs.
According to the BNBC, the travel distance will be 45 metres.
Easing the compulsion of 1.5 metres of minimum width for stairs, the NTC set the width at 0.9 metres.
The committee also incorporated in the operating manual that the maximum distance of fire extinguishers would be 75 feet instead of 50 feet set by the fire act, the source said.
Labour secretary Mikail Shiper said, ‘We have deviated to some extent from the BNBC and the fire act in preparing the manual for the interest of the industry and workers.’
If the manual follows the BNBC and the fire act strictly, half of the existing RMG units would face closure, he said.
Ishtiaque Ahmed, a professor at BUET, who is also involved with the process of making common checklist for the RMG sector, told New Age that they had allowed relaxation in some minor rules for the existing factory buildings inspection but not in any major one.
‘The BNBC will be applicable fully for new buildings, but we have prepared manual for assessing the existing buildings and a good numbers of those were built before the endorsement of the BNBC,’ he said.
Ishtiaque said that relaxation in the rules had been allowed through discussion with the local and international partners and all parties agreed to it.
The NTC, an initiative taken by the government to ensure fire and building safety in the RMG sector, from November 22 started inspection to the RMG factories, which are not on the inspection lists published by EU Accord and North American Alliance, two global retailers’ groups.
Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh formed by European Union retailers and Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety Initiative formed by North American retailers will separately inspect the factories that manufacture products for their members.
After the Rana Plaza building collapse on April 24 that killed more than 1,100 people, mostly garment workers, the retailers and apparel brands from the EU and North America separately formed Accord and Alliance.
Both the consortiums announced their action plans including factory inspection, training and worker empowerment and said that they would inspect factories that manufacture products for them.
In the wake of the Rana Plaza incident, the government had adopted a National Tripartite Plan of Action in association with the ILO to initiate a move to inspect rest of the factories.
Accord published a list of around 1,600 factories while Alliance a list of around 620 apparel units for inspection.
-With New Age input
