bdnews24.com :
The government hopes to complete within a week the recruitment of 67 factory inspectors to fulfil a US precondition to restore duty-free access to a range of Bangladeshi goods under the generalised system of preferences (GSP).
State Minister for Labour and Employment Mojibul Haque Chunnu said this on Sunday.
He made the announcement while unveiling a website and factory inspection database of the Department of Inspection for Factories and Establishments in keeping with the wishes of foreign garments buyers.
He said President Abdul Hamid had already sanctioned the recruitment and a gazette notification was expected on Sunday.
The junior minister said that the inspectors would be First Class non-cadre officials, the hiring being done through the Bangladesh Public Service Commission (BPSC).
It will make a selection from the Bangladesh Civil Service (BCS) candidates who have already cleared all tests but are yet to be absorbed.
The government has to inform the US by April 15 the progresses made in fulfilling the conditions to get back the GSP, scrapped on June 27 last year because of labour rights and workplace safety lacunae.
After suspending the trade benefit, the US laid down an action plan containing 16 conditions for the GSP restoration.
The major conditions include the recruitment of factory inspectors, the launching a database of workers and their factories, and giving freedom of association to workers in export processing zones.
Chunnu said that Bangladesh taken major strides towards fulfilling the three major conditions.
After unveiling the website and factory inspection database – www.dife.gov.bd, he said that the database was prepared after inspecting as many as 3,498 factories.
He said that with the help of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), a total of 23 teams prepared the list of 3,498 factories and the database of their workers.
The data, which can be accessed by all, has details about workers and brief histories of the factories they work in.
Chunnu admitted that Bangladeshi garment factories were unplanned and that many were still without registration.
A process of recording all of them was in progress.
Meanwhile, private mobile phone operator Grameenphone has donated Tk 161.6 million to the fund of the government’s Workers Welfare Fund from its last year’s profit.
Senior company officials handed over a cheque of ‘Profit Participation Fund’ to the junior labour minister at the Secretariat on Sunday.
Labour and Employment Secretary Mikail Shipar, Grameenphone’s Chief Human Resource Officer Kazi Mohammad Shahed, Chief Corporate Affairs Officer Mahmud Hossain, Director of Corporate Affairs Ishtiak Hossain Chowdhury and General Manager of Corporate Affairs Enayet Karim were present at ceremony.
