DHAKA: The Human Rights Watch said the Bangladesh government should make the reports on the findings of RMG factory safety inspections public.
“Reports should be published in Bangla as well as English so that they are accessible to workers,” it added.
“Efforts to make the Bangladesh garment industry safer and protect the rights of workers will not succeed unless details of all factory inspections are made public,” said Phil Robertson, Asia deputy director. “Workers need this information so they can make informed decisions about whether it is safe to enter their factories.”
Bangladesh government and retailers have largely failed to make public the findings of factory safety inspections ordered after the April 2013 Rana Plaza catastrophe that killed and injured several thousand workers, the rights group said.
More than 1,100 workers died after they were persuaded, and in some cases forced, by their employers to return to Rana Plaza a day after they evacuated because large cracks appeared in the building’s walls. As a result of the tragedy, the Bangladesh government and western retailers are engaged in inspecting more than 3,500 garment factories for structural integrity and fire and electrical safety. Groups conducting inspections have committed to releasing details of their findings, but more than one year after the deadly disaster, reports on fewer than 40 factories have been published so far by nongovernmental groups. The government has published no information on the inspections that it has carried out.
In the aftermath of the Rana Plaza collapse, the Bangladesh government and retailers entered into several different agreements to ensure workplace safety for workers. The Bangladesh government is responsible for inspecting about 1,500 factories, many of which do sub-contracting work. Some are in shared buildings and are believed by experts to be the most at risk.
In a program supported by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), and funded by the European Union, the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) staff have already inspected more than 250 of these factories.
The government and ILO have set up a website to publish the inspection data, but to date nothing has been published. A spokesman for the Department of Inspection for Factories and Establishments said no decision had yet been taken on when the results of the investigations by BUET would be made public.
A group of 26 North American retailers, who work together as members of the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, is inspecting about 680 factories. It has recently published the details of fire, structural, and electrical safety inspections of 28 factories. All of the factories require remedial work. The reports are in English, and include some photographs. According to the Alliance website, details have also been shared with workers and worker representatives, but Bangla versions of the reports have not been made public or posted on the Internet. The managing director of the Alliance, Rabin Mesbah, said at a news conference on May 16 that a further 10 to 15 reports will be released each month.
A second body, formed by 175 mainly European retailers, is currently inspecting 1,545 factories. They are signatories of the legally binding Accord on Fire and Building Safety. This has made public details of ten factory inspections. The reports, which are designed to be easily understood by workers, are written in Bangla as well as English, and include photographs. The reports state that all ten factories inspected have safety problems that still need to be addressed. Some factories inspected by Accord engineers have been forced to shut due to serious structural problems. An Accord spokesperson told Human Rights Watch that more reports will soon be posted on the Internet.
As a state party to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Bangladesh is bound by article 7 that everyone has the right to “just and favorable conditions of work” which ensure, among other things, “safe and healthy working conditions.”
In July 2013, Bangladesh, the EU, and the ILO agreed to a compact on labor rights and factory safety. The three signatories, which were later joined by the US government, agreed to create “a publicly accessible database listing all RMG and knitwear factories, as a platform for reporting labor, fire and building safety inspections, which would include information on the factories and their locations, their owners, the results of inspections regarding complaints of anti-union discrimination and unfair labor practices, fines and sanctions administered, as well as remedial actions taken, if any, subject to relevant national legislation.”
Source: HRW
BDST: 1230 HRS, MAY 28, 2014
