DHAKA: Bangladesh and top Western retailers agreed safety standards covering some 3,500 factories yesterday, paving the way for more thorough inspections.
Retailers, government and union representatives agreed the minimum fire and safety standards for factories where some four million workers stitch clothes for outlets such as Walmart and H&M, officials said.
“This is a very significant development. These common safety standards will now pave the way for the start of factory inspections from Friday,” International Labour Organisation (ILO) official Srinivas Reddy said. The standards are aimed at simplifying inspections and avoiding duplication following the Rana Plaza disaster in April that killed 1,135 people and shone a global spotlight on shoddy conditions at factories.
“Once a factory is inspected in line with the common standards, there will be no need for another initiative to inspect it again,” Reddy, the ILO’s Bangladesh chief, said. Retailers and engineering experts from a top Bangladesh university have developed the guidelines which were formally endorsed yesterday, said Reddy from the ILO which helped broker the deal.
US and European retailers signed up to two separate safety pacts after coming under intense pressure in the wake of the April disaster. The two groups will carry out inspections of their 2,000-odd factories using the new standards, while the government will check about 1,500 factories not covered by the pacts, starting from today, Reddy said.
The Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, which represents the US retailers, announced on Wednesday that it had agreed to the new standards. Bangladesh’s top labour official Mikail Shipar said all the factories would be forced to adopt the standards. Failure to meet them could lead to a shutdown.
Bangladesh’s $22 billion garment industry is the world’s second largest after China’s and employs four million workers, most of them women. But the sector has been hit by a string of deadly disasters. Thousands of workers have also staged street protests in recent days against a new minimum wage which they say is too low, forcing the closure of several hundred factories.
AFP
