Moving out of rented space remains a major problem

The readymade garment (RMG) owners are finding it difficult to shift their factories from buildings they are sharing with others mainly due to scarcity of industrial land and its high price, industry insiders said.

Shifting garment factories from shared buildings is now a key demand of the foreign buyers to ensure a safe and decent working condition.

Buyers said they are facing various obstacles to their tasks of ensuring fire safety and other compliance-related issues in the factories that are housed in shared buildings. Incompetence of the building management committee is one such obstacle.

Workers' safety system, firefighting equipment, evacuation mechanism, proper installation of machines and a healthy work environment are among the social compliance issues.

"A good number of RMG factories are housed in rented buildings due to scarcity of industrial land and its high price", Abdus Salam Murshedy, a former BGMEA (Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association) president and the present head of the Exporters' Association of Bangladesh (EAB), told the FE.

He said the RMG factory owners are facing shortage of space in their units; so the entrepreneurs cannot address the compliance issues which is a major requirement of the foreign buyers. Mr Murshedy said the factory owners have been trying to address the compliance issue for restoration of the GSP (generalised system of preferences) in the US market but space shortage has emerged as one of the main barriers to it.

He said now the country's RMG industry is facing pressure from international buyers; so factory owners are trying to fulfil the buyers' conditions including ensuring safety measures in all garment units.

Bangladesh is now the second largest apparel exporter; so all the international buyers -- traditional and non-traditional -- are coming here for RMG sourcing and their primary requirement is to look at the state of compliance, said Mr Murshedy, also managing director of Envoy Group.

Former president of BGMEA Anwar ul Alam Chowdhury Parvez told the FE: "A large number of RMG factories in and outside Dhaka and Chittagong are accommodated in a minimum space of rented buildings; so entrepreneurs have been failing to ensure compliance".

He said in recent times after the Tazreen fire accident and Rana Plaza collapse, most of the factory owners tried to address the compliance issues following continued pressure from home and abroad.

BGMEA President Atiqul Islam said the RMG owners are now under pressure from buyers to address the compliance issues after the Tazreen trauma. He said Tazreen fire accident and Rana Plaza collapse also dealt another blow to the garment factories which ignore compliance issues in their units.

According to the BGMEA research cell, nearly 1,857 garment workers have so far died in different tragic accidents from the year 1990 to 2013.

Major incidents were the Rana Plaza collapse, fire incidents at That's It Sportswear Limited, owned by Ha-Meem Group, and Tazreen Fashions Ltd, owned by Tuba Group, accidents at Spectrum Sweater Industries, Phoenix Garments, Smart Export Garments, Garib and Garib, Matrix Sweater, KTS Composite Textile Mills and Sun Knitting.

According to the BGMEA, the country has nearly 5,000 apparel factories. Of them more than 50 per cent have failed to comply with safety standards due to shortage of space.