THE New Nation on Monday reported that indigenous garment factories in Keranigonj on the other side of river Buriganga is fast developing the locality as an staggering industrial hub without appropriate infrastructure to ensure orderly growth of industries with workers safety and environmental standard. The area is home to local garment makers over the last 50 years supplying markets throughout the country. Producers from here now supply over 70 percent of domestic demand as they are operating without any government support while increasingly exporting to global market. But the area has already grown too big with too many factories and it is time that it should be developed orderly as an industrial belt.
It is really an unfocused garments makers’ zone mainly making denim items for domestic customers while exporting to over 35 countries, including the US, the UK, Canada, Thailand, Singapore and India. Producers claim they sell products worth nearly Tk 600 million per day and about 30 percent is meant for exports. The report quoted a garment producer as saying that they want to raise the export volume to $4 billion from existing $1 billion annually. Their products are attracting both local and foreign customers because of the quality that is being maintained by the garment makers in the city suburb.
Producers in Keranigonj have already created enough potentials but much of it remains underutilized as per report for shortage of gas, electricity and low cost industrial loans to run the production. Industry leaders operating in the locality calls for incentive packages to make their greater access to low cost finance easier. The small-scale enterprises now need greater infrastructure, which may be developed in a new industrial town with factories, roads, sewerage and sanitary system. The area is becoming overcrowded creating risks to safety from fire and such other accidents.
Producers in the area are mainly making denim and woven items including T-shirts, jeans, shirts and undergarments for both male and female of middle groups that meets demands for 50 percent of denim items. Several lakhs workers are working in more than 10,000 small and medium factories. Their products are popular and sell in different shopping malls at several times higher price from factory gates and yet much lower in any rate. Many exporters buy items from there to supply buyers on contractual basis.
What the industry leaders in the area call for is helping the industrial belt to grow as an orderly industrial belt with better working condition, safety standard and protection to environment. It can’t be left to grow on its own and in our view it is time that the authorities concerned should take the matter into account.
