ONE in two factories in the country does not have a safety clearance from the Department of Inspection for Factories and Establishments. DIFE statistics show that only 23,589 manufacturing units have taken safety clearance. There are 42,792 factories in the country, according to BBS in 2012, which employ more than 50 lakh workers, revealed BBS’s 2013 economic census, as per a report of a local daily.
Factory owners and inspectors said that many manufacturing units were not even aware of the legally-binding requirement to get licence from DIFE.’ We launched a campaign in October last year to encourage factory owners to register with us but got a very poor response,’ said Inspector General of the DIFE Syed Ahmed, adding, ‘Most of the factory management have no idea about DIFE.’ He said, ‘Due to lack of manpower and jurisdiction, the DIFE failed to exercise its authority’. He hoped to launch a massive campaign from June. According to DIFE, at least 3,743 readymade garment factories are now under regular supervision of their inspectors.
However, around 50 industrial sectors in the country, including jute, pharmaceuticals, ship-breaking and ship-building, chemicals and plastic manufacturers, mostly ignored registering with DIFE. Syed Sultan Uddin Ahmed, assistant executive director of Bangladesh Institute of Labour Studies, said not having licence from DIFE was an offence in addition to not ensuring safety and hygiene in the workplace.
The industries could ignore DIFE without any difficulty only if they knew that they could get away with it-in other words, DIFE was not serious about enforcing its mandate in the past. It took two deadly incidents-the Tazreen Fashions fire and the Rana Plaza collapse for the Ministry of Labour and Employment to draft a national inspection policy outlining provisions for specifying the jurisdiction and area of responsibility of inspectors, and for the authorities to ensure modern, effective and prevention-oriented labour inspection, and occupational and workplace safety.
It should not have taken the deaths of over 1300 workers for the government to come up with a policy to oversee workplace safety. This should have been in place from the start. However, policies which are mostly sound on paper, may have problems being implemented. Therefore there must be an adequate provision of manpower to ensure that inspectors have the power to do their jobs properly without being intimidated by the employees of powerful companies. They must also be paid an adequate amount to ensure that they don’t feel tempted to accept bribes. It is unfortunate but true that it is far easier to formulate policies rather than implement them because it easier to make laws than ensure that they are followed.
