Business Desk :
Accord on Fire and Building Safety, the legally binding initiative to ensure safe workplaces for readymade garment factory workers, will continue beyond its May 2018 deadline as the local regulatory body is not ready yet in Bangladesh.
It said on Thursday that it would continue operations until the local regulatory body demonstrated ‘full capacity to inspect factories, compel remedies, and protect workers’.
After an Oct 19 meeting, Commerce Minister Tofail Ahmed said the accord was given six more months beyond the deadline to hand over its work to the labour ministry’s Remediation Coordination Cell.
International Labour Organization, IndustriAll and Uni Global representatives sat with two ministers, and top officials of the BGMEA and FBCCI that day.
He said the accord would be known as ‘Transition Accord’ during the extended period. “The Accord is ready to continue operations beyond May 2018 as all parties recognise, substantial additional capacity-building is necessary before responsibility to protect workers in factories producing for Accord signatory brands can be responsibly handed over to a national regulatory body,” the accord said in a statement on Thursday.
According to the statement, the government confirmed last week it would extend the permission of the accord to continue beyond May 2018 until a joint monitoring committee, comprised of accord brand signatories, accord trade union signatories, BGMEA, ILO and the government, agreed that the “stated conditions” for a handover are met.
“This joint monitoring body will review the progress towards meeting these conditions on a bi-annual basis,” the accord says.
The readiness conditions include demonstrated proficiency in inspection capacity, remediation of hazards, and enforcement of the law against non-compliant factories, full transparency of governance and remediation progress, and investigation and fair resolution of workers’ safety complaints.
Accord on Fire and Building Safety, the legally binding initiative to ensure safe workplaces for readymade garment factory workers, will continue beyond its May 2018 deadline as the local regulatory body is not ready yet in Bangladesh.
It said on Thursday that it would continue operations until the local regulatory body demonstrated ‘full capacity to inspect factories, compel remedies, and protect workers’.
After an Oct 19 meeting, Commerce Minister Tofail Ahmed said the accord was given six more months beyond the deadline to hand over its work to the labour ministry’s Remediation Coordination Cell.
International Labour Organization, IndustriAll and Uni Global representatives sat with two ministers, and top officials of the BGMEA and FBCCI that day.
He said the accord would be known as ‘Transition Accord’ during the extended period. “The Accord is ready to continue operations beyond May 2018 as all parties recognise, substantial additional capacity-building is necessary before responsibility to protect workers in factories producing for Accord signatory brands can be responsibly handed over to a national regulatory body,” the accord said in a statement on Thursday.
According to the statement, the government confirmed last week it would extend the permission of the accord to continue beyond May 2018 until a joint monitoring committee, comprised of accord brand signatories, accord trade union signatories, BGMEA, ILO and the government, agreed that the “stated conditions” for a handover are met.
“This joint monitoring body will review the progress towards meeting these conditions on a bi-annual basis,” the accord says.
The readiness conditions include demonstrated proficiency in inspection capacity, remediation of hazards, and enforcement of the law against non-compliant factories, full transparency of governance and remediation progress, and investigation and fair resolution of workers’ safety complaints.
