Rana Plaza and Tazreen Fashions tragedies during the last one and a half years have brought a number of critical issues to spotlight. But it remains to be seen whether these have stirred a wake-up call to address them in right earnest. Strange it indeed sounds that a highly important matter such as factory inspection has never received the right attention. Now that the tragic incidents of fire and building collapse have traumatised the entire nation, and stakeholders both within and without are upbeat about factory safety and worker's welfare in the garment sector, it seems as though factories in bangladesh mean only garment factories.
The country has a diverse range of mills and factories scattered all over, and the government should have been prompted to put in place a thorough procedure for inspection and surveillance long before. At last, the factory tragedies, attributable largely to lack of regulatory control and surveillance, have caused the government to formulate a factory inspection policy. Better late than never. The government in collaboration with the International Labour Organisation (ILO) has reportedly initiated a move to formulate an inspection policy for the factories and establishments to upgrade the current traditional inspection system to an international standard. The policy, meant to ensure effective and prevention-oriented labour inspection and occupational safety, aims at bringing all industries under a comprehensive inspection system. Understandably, the thrust would initially be more on the RMG sector as the government is under serious pressure to come up with visible improvement in this regard to assure foreign stakeholders including rights' bodies, trade unions and the buyers. But such a policy should have brought all kinds of factories within its ambit in order to be able to cater to the requirements in a well-structured and inclusive manner.
The Department of Inspection of Factories and Establishments (DIFE), elevated recently from a directorate, is the designated agency to finalise the policy based on inputs provided by the ILO. This, by all means, is a challenging task in as much as it attempts to address an area that had been left to utter neglect in the past. Formulating the policy would be just a starter, as the DIFE is not at all equipped to conduct factory inspections at the moment. While shortage of manpower is a perennial excuse for most agencies in the country, recruiting the right manpower and then equipping them with required technical knowledge and expertise will, in this case, demand special attention of the government.
Besides the inspection part, the job will call for developing an extensive database of all factories and preparing sector-specific inspection manuals. At present, it has been reported that there is only one inspection manual for the RMG industry while there are more than 45 other industrial sectors including jute, pharmaceuticals, ship breaking, ship-building, brick fields, chemicals, re-rolling, tannery and plastic sectors in the country.
Stakeholders feel that since the proposed policy is going to be framed at a very critical time -- in the wake of catastrophic factory tragedies - it should, more than anything else, focus on the modus operandi for effective implementation of the policy. Here, expertise and competence of manpower should also figure prominently.
