Alliance, Texas Univ team up on RMG training review

The Alliance has teamed up with the University of Texas Health Science Centre at Houston to conduct an independent assessment of the former's basic fire safety training for readymade garment (RMG) workers in Bangladesh.

The North American apparel retailers' group has contracted the University and the project team will be led by Dr Hasanat Alamgir, a University of Texas (UT) School of Public Health associate professor for occupational health at the Program in Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences.

 "The team will conduct a research study to yield valid and reliable results, collect data through randomised surveys and focus groups from workers, and ultimately deliver a detailed report on the effectiveness of the Alliance worker training," said a statement issued by the Alliance on Wednesday.

This report will help identify areas of improvement as the Alliance training programmes continue and expand in the coming years, according to the report.

Dr Alamgir is an expert in occupational epidemiology and intervention evaluation, with a background in assessing workplace hazards, health and safety.

In February last Dr. Alamgir advised on the design and implementation of the Alliance baseline survey, which engaged 3,200 randomly selected workers from 28 representative Alliance factories to identify gaps in worker knowledge of fire safety practices and develop baseline indicators.

This initial survey demonstrated the urgent need for basic fire safety training, with results showing that only 39 per cent of workers could correctly identify what to do in case of emergency and only two per cent could identify five common fire hazards.

munni_fe@yahoo.com