Home ›› 06 Sep 2022 ›› Editorial
The nearly for decades journey of manufacturing and excellence has never been easy. From child labour elimination in 1995 till today, we are making many positive changes in the area of compliance safety and well-being of our workers.
Over the past 7 years, we made massive efforts in transforming the industry in terms of safety remediation of factories and creating a culture of safety in workplace.
The ready-made garments sector of Bangladesh is said to be the powerhouse of Bangladesh. ‘Made in Bangladesh’ has earned its respect worldwide. RMG sector has played a vital role in the growth of the country's economy, contributing up to 83 per cent of export earnings. The journey of Bangladesh's garments manufacturing started about 61 years ago in 1960 with Reaz Store, later named Reaz Garments Ltd.
It was not until 1973 that the Bangladesh RMG industry first exported any garments overseas. Bangladesh's garments industry has seen massive growth due to the EU GSP scheme, tax holidays for foreign companies, the establishment of EPZ and back-to-back LC facilities for manufacturers which allowed both small and large manufacturers to grow.
Also, the readymade Garment Industry is the most vital sector for earning foreign currencies that strengthen the economy of Bangladesh for the last couple of decades. At the same time, this industry opened a new door of employment for the rural marginal people. The working environment of the garment factories is not congenial to health and the income level of the workers in this industry is very poor to keep up their minimum living requirements in society.
As a result, the workers in the readymade garment industry are not physically and mentally sound to do the work efficiently. Keeping this in mind, the study has been conducted to identify the major health problems of the workers in the garment industry of Bangladesh. In this study, 265 workers have been interviewed personally and collected data have been analysed through factor analysis to identify the major health problems of the workers derived from the working environment and the nature of their job. This study identified fourteen major health problems of the workers. They are: pain in body muscles, complexity arising from abortion, food poisoning, pruritus, eye strain, neck pain, hepatitis, frequent headache, cut injury, fatigue, common cold, numbness and tingling of fingers and arms, gastric pain and helminthiasis. The government along with other authorities concerned should take necessary steps to overcome the health problems of the workers so that they can contribute more to the development of the readymade garment industry of Bangladesh.
There is a phrase we sometimes hear in business, “You're only as good as your worst employee”. One bad employee can easily tarnish the reputation of a whole business. Similarly, one bad business can easily tarnish the reputation of a whole industry. In the country’s RMG sector, where the global spotlight always shines so bright. It only needs a report of products being sourced from one factory which is found to be unsafe, or reports of one factory mistreating its workers, and the whole industry is damaged. We have many world-class RMG factories in Bangladesh, but the achievements of the majority risk being overshadowed by the blemishes of a few unless standards and levels of compliance are raised across the board.
We have designed the nine dots in a way that when decoded the first dot means, people come first. Our motto is to work forever for the well-being of the people of Bangladesh and humankind at large, inside and outside the industry. Here the underlying principle is to improve conditions for the country’s approximately 4 million garment workers, contribute to the national economy and improve the fate of the common people. The second dot centres on inclusivity, which is already one of the hallmarks of Bangladesh’s RMG industry.
Being the country’s largest formal sector employer, with around 60% of our employees being women, we want to listen and be amenable. We are open to involving people from across the socio-economic spectrum, without any form of discrimination. The third dot is about transparency. Now Bangladesh is a frontrunner in transparency regarding factory safety and value-chain responsibility. Accountability and access to information are central to building a trustworthy, flexible and resilient organization.
The fourth dot is about infrastructure. In the last decade, we have made tremendous progress in making our factories safe, environment-friendly and employee-friendly. As a result, workplace mishaps have become a thing of the past in the RMG sector. Bangladesh’s readymade garments (RMG) sector besides, a lack of investment in new machinery and technologies, according to industry sources is facing a serious shortage of skilled workforce which is likely to slow down the up-gradation and transformation of the garment industry necessary to meet the demand from the global clothing industry. Such a shortage has emerged as a major constraint to the realisation of the sector’s true growth potential, in terms of productivity and production of high-end apparel.
According to the Directorate of Textiles, at present, the country’s apparel sector is facing a shortage of about 0.11 million skilled manpower, from floor to executive level. The problem will turn more complex if the exporters fail to fill up the positions of highly skilled middle management officials and skilled workers needed in the sector. According to a report by the DoT, the gap might be as high as 182,000 by the year 2021 when the country’s RMG sector is planned to hit US$ 50 billion in export. There is a need for more vocational and technical institutes to create a skilled and technically sound workforce to cater to the needs of the RMG sector. To enable Bangladesh's RMG sector to tap into china’s gradually declining RMG market share, to make it more competitive and sustainable, and thereby foster economic growth, some issues need to be addressed urgently.
Considering this fact, this paper has put forward a set of recommendations which are as follows: Reduction of lead time, lead time reduction can be ensured through improving services and improvement of seaport facilities, increased railway capacity, improving the efficiency of Dhaka airport with dedicating a special channel for fast clearing of RMG exports, increasing airfreight capacity in ensuring the fastest delivery of sample goods and other accessories and also developing strong backward linkages. While most importantly, a trade facilitation idea should be introduced, for example, a single window system to reduce lead time. Since single window system will allow manufacturers and exporters to deal with multiple government agencies that are situated in multiple locations under one roof to obtain the necessary papers, permits, and clearances to complete their import or export processes in one go.
The collapse of Rana Plaza was the most unfortunate industrial accident for us. But the incident marked the beginning of a new era for the industry through unprecedented steps including safety overhaul initiatives across the industry, legal reforms and administrative capacity building, and the collaboration we have witnessed among the supply chain partners and the development partners. Today, Bangladesh's RMG sector is a front-runner in factory safety, responsible manufacturing and workers’ wellbeing.
In the past eight years since the incident, a lot of changes have taken place in this sector. Today, 100 per cent of our factories are checked for building, fire and electrical safety. The factory inspection reports are disclosed in the public domain online which has set a unique example in the world on the issue of workplace safety and as a result, Bangladesh has emerged probably as the safest and most transparent readymade garment producing country. In this journey, the role of the accord and other initiatives like Alliance, and ILO Better Works that helped us to improve the overall situation cannot be overstated. From the very beginning, the challenge was to make the industry safer and compliant which is transparent. All of our factories extended the highest possible assistance to the accord to carry out its operation in terms of safety audits, remediation and training. It was a challenging task indeed but we could make it possible since there was a positive and honest intention by the factories to change, and they did it. Since the emergence of the accord, our exports have grown from 21 billion dollars to 34 billion dollars, and global brands and retailers are showing their confidence in us as we continue to add value to their business.
This is also true that the safety regime that is being enforced by the accord has certain cost implications on the suppliers, which makes the field uneven for Bangladeshi manufacturers. So it’s really difficult to assess to what extent such an uneven playing field has distorted our trade and market. We are committed to the positive move taken by the industry, and we believe sustainability itself ensures its payoff. So, even if buyers decide to place more orders in non-accord countries (or countries where safety standards are not up to the level that we have achieved), that will cause a certain cost taking into account long-term business viability. We will continue to lead in ethical manufacturing as it has now become part of our DNA. More to that, speeding up the construction of the two first-track mega infrastructure projects, such as the Dhaka-Chittagong 4-lane Highway, Deep seaport at Payra will significantly contribute to reducing lead time, which in turn will lead to the satisfaction of buyers to place more orders. Despite many difficulties faced by the RMG sector over the past years, it has successfully carved a niche in the world market and kept continuing to show robust performance. It is the resilience of our sector which has enabled us to achieve the second highest RMG exporter’s medal in the world and make Made in Bangladesh with pride a worldwide famous logo. It is not the race with other manufacturers that we are concerned about; rather we are emphasizing value addition into our export basket. We want to set up our standard concerning excellence in product diversification and value addition. While we have made significant progress in social and environmental sustainability, the priority would be to keep this momentum, as well as to improve industry standards over time.
The writer is a researcher and Columnist. He can be contacted at raihan567@yahoo.com
