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Five years ago this week, just after thousands of garment workers had settled in behind their sewing machines, a poorly built eight-story Bangladeshi factory complex called Rana Plaza buckled and collapsed.
More than 1, people, mostly young women, died; 2, were injured. In the years since the worst disaster ever in the apparel industry, Bangladesh has become a laboratory for testing factory safety.
Western brands and retailers that source low-priced clothing there have inspected 2, active factories and pressured suppliers to make real improvements. Dozens of shoddily built facilities have closed altogether. But the Bangladesh experiment has been only partially successful.
The European and American companies limited their reach and left thousands of factories untouched. The Bangladeshi government, meanwhile, has demonstrated little willingness to change its lackadaisical attitude toward regulation. Millions of garment workers remain at risk, especially those working for subcontractors—small second- and third-tier factories often completely unknown to Western brands.
The turmoil in the wake of Rana Plaza constituted a public relations crisis for Western brands and retailers. Some companies have formed a pair of initiatives: These groups inspect factories, oversee remediation of safety problems, and collectively cut off any suppliers that fail to comply.
Within their self-assigned jurisdictions — defined as the body of factories with which their members directly do business — the Accord and the Alliance have performed impressively.
The Accord reports that 85 percent of the hazards its inspectors identified have been fixed. These include blocked exits, inadequate sprinkler systems, faulty electrical wiring, and unstable support pillars. The Alliance reports an 88 percent remediation rate.
Catastrophic accidents have declined in Bangladesh. Each year from through , this number has hovered between two and five such accidents, according to data analysis contained in a new report by the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights.
The Accord and Alliance will not continue indefinitely. The Alliance plans to wrap up its work by the end of The Accord will renew its mandate every six months, but only through mid At some point, the factories that the two initiatives have overseen will return to the supervision of the Bangladeshi government, which is notorious for having ignored death traps like Rana Plaza and Tazreen Fashions, where a November fire killed Subcontractors present a big challenge.
No one has an exact count of subcontractors, most of which operate with little or no regulation. While the NYU Stern Center estimates that there may be as many as 3, of these factories, the government denies a subcontracting system even exists. But on a recent fact-finding trip, researchers from the NYU Stern Center visited two subcontracting factories of and workers each. At one, the owner told of receiving a list of fire-safety mandates from a government inspector.
Variations on the model have been used for years by international organisations that convene donor conferences to respond to refugee crises. In the supply-chain context, the goal ought to be protecting workers and spreading the benefits of globalisation more evenly.
The task force should be Bangladeshi-led and include Western brands and retailers that have profited from selling Bangladeshi-made clothes. Western governments also need to step up, recognising that their citizens benefit from the opportunity to buy these clothes at low prices. Traditional international funding agencies like the World Bank also ought to do much more to protect the workers in this sector.
There is a role for private philanthropies, too. Whatever budget the task force sets for itself, the amount should be understood as paying for the attainment of safety today. Once current gaps have been addressed, responsibility ought to shift to the government of Bangladesh. The fifth anniversary of Rana Plaza calls for a renewed and collective commitment to a safe and secure garment industry.
Your email address will not be published. Written By Paul Barrett 24th Apr Paul Barrett 24th Apr More from this author. Is peace on the horizon? Modi and Xi set laudable objectives but the devil is in the implementation Marriage: A thing of the past? The task force should be Bangladeshi-led and include Western brands and retailers that have profited from selling Bangladeshi-made clothes April 27th, Reply. Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published.