Anisul Islam Noor :
Europe and North America’s two buyer associations-Accord and Alliance- have suspended their relation with 298 garment factories in the country, a source of Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) said on Monday.
Many of these factory owners have failed to comply with reform programs and ensure safety measure within the schedule time.
Talking with The New Nation a leader of BGMEA said that the Accord and the Alliance are working to improve safety standards of factories in the country’s garment sector. The two of the coalition partners are severing business ties with the back-end garment suppliers, who have been identified by their inspections.
The European-based Catering Co-operators, Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, have identified these factories as tertiary suppliers, he said.
On the other hand, the North American-based Alliance for Bangladesh Workers Safety is calling those factories as suspended factories. From the year 2014 to February 8, 2018, the total number of terminated factories of 298
According to the leader, the Alliance and the Accord announced that the failure of the factory to take safety measures for workers’ rights, the inability to empty the defective factories, failure to prove the reform, non-cooperation in evaluation, lack of factory design, and the collapse of the factory with 298 factories.
Most of the cases have been blamed for failure of the factory safety measures. As a result, the recommendations of the two hundred customers involved in not dealing with these factories have been suggested.
However, there is a scope to reconnect with the Alliance-Accord for error corrections. In that case, the factory authorities will have to take the evaluation process at their own expense.
Currently the total number of factories covered by the Alliance is 660. These factories employed about 1.3 million workers. On the other hand, 1,621 factories have been covered under Accord. These are 2.1 million and 28626 workers. There are 165 factories in the list of Alliance Relations.
Of these, seven factories rehabilitation work has started, but it is still identified as suspended. On the other hand, there are 133 units of Accord’s terminated listing factories, sources said.
