The International Labour Organisation (ILO) will initiate a $24 million safety campaign in a latest effort to overhaul appalling conditions in Bangladesh’s clothing factories, according to officials.
The campaign will target factories that operate as sub-contractors or produce garments for lesser-known Western retailers, many of which have not signed safety accords established since the disastrous Rana Plaza building collapse earlier this year.
“We want to bring the number of industrial accidents to a tolerable limit,” Labour and Employment Secretary Mikail Shipar told reporters. “There will be zero tolerance [of] poor working conditions in our factories.”
Even before April’s Rana Plaza collapse in which more than 1,100 people perished, a fire at the Tazreen garment factory in Dhaka killed 111 workers last November; the country’s worst such tragedy. That disaster revealed unauthorised sub-contracting of orders from Western groups. Many EU retailers have signed a new safety accord since the April disaster, pledging improved conditions at factories, while US retailers have launched a separate pact.
According to Mikail Shipar, the ILO and the Bangladeshi government will reportedly sign an agreement this week for the $24 million inspection campaign to be funded jointly by the Dutch, British and Canadian governments. Bangladesh has carried out some safety inspections since the Tazreen and Rana Plaza tragedies, but there are too few government inspectors and many lack the necessary technical expertise.
A Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology survey conducted after the April disaster found about 90 per cent of the buildings housing factories in Bangladesh were structurally unsafe.
