VARIOUS newspapers published the news that the government would finalise the rules to implement labour laws in a week as a USTR team is scheduled to visit Bangladesh soon to review progress in workplace safety and labour rights. Apparently officials from the commerce ministry will also visit the USA to regain trade benefits by highlighting to the United States Trade Representative (USTR) the progress Bangladesh has made so far.
This move comes some years after the United States suspended the generalised system of preferences (GSP) for Bangladesh in 2014 after the Tazreen Fashions fire and the Rana Plaza building collapse as the USA did not put Bangladesh on the renewed list of recipients of the trade benefits this year. Reports added that the draft rules have been sent to the law ministry for vetting and the formulation of the rules was the last condition of the 16-point Bangladesh Action Plan that the USTR asked the Asian country to fulfill to regain GSP. Earlier reports show that after the twin industrial disasters, the government amended the labour law on July 15, 2013, but did not formulate the rules to implement the law at the factory level. So far Bangladesh has made a tremendous progress in meeting the 16 conditions but even then, some issues still persist which need to be addressed to reinstate the GSP, according to the news reports.
Passing a law is no child’s play and even though the government wants to implement the labour law in a week (even though seen as a positive move), it is not easily done. Many procedures need to be followed to pass the law before the law can be practicallly enforced. Setting unreasonably high target goals is not healthy as proper implementation of the law must be considered. In the event the labour law is finalized and actually implemented in reality, we will hopefully see a positive change in workers’ morale as well as productivity. Many studies suggest that if labour are treated fairly and given good wages, productivity is heightened and the resulting profits benefit not only the employer, but also the economy as a whole as business is brisk and profitable. If the government had the intention to genuinely make situations better for Bangladeshi labour, they should have made proper efforts to pass the law much earlier which would have helped facilitated the labour law’s implementation by now as well as made a direct impact on the country’s economy. In the last year and a half the government has wasted time and resources unnecessarily as the steps being taken now could have been set in motion if the labour laws would have been implemented by now. We have leftists in the government who want to isolate Bangladesh from the USA and rest of the Western countries. This crisis has to be overcome.
