Ensuring the security of garments industries
Monday, 28 June 2010
Ahmed Ali
A large number of garments industries were, again, vandalised at Ashulia-Savar recently. These industries suffered attacks on their premises, equipment and finished goods in varying degrees. The claimed workers' discontent linked to the violence, has apparently subsided. But the same has certainly not died down.
Tendencies to vandalise garments producing factories are there and the trouble-makers would in all likelihood be looking for opportunities to engage in mischief afresh. That there is an element of calculated game behind the wings, is without any doubt. This view is accepted as a credible one by several studies not only by the industry's operators but also from the impartial investigations of security agencies. The investigations reportedly found out repeatedly evidences of the best factories, in terms of paying their workers in time and adequately, getting targeted for attacks, mostly on no credible grounds. The involvement of some extraneous elements was also transparent in some such incidents.
This is important on the part of the government to provide physical security to garments industries that is the source of livelihood for at least 8.0 million people directly and indirectly and yields some 70 per cent of the country's foreign currency earnings. This sector is just too pivotal to be allowed to be progressively undermined by any trouble-mongering by vested interests getting encouraged by dilly-dallying and gaps between what the law enforces pledge they would do and the actual steps taken by them to that end.
Readymade garments (RMG) exporters have been imploring that government's security agencies should draw up a comprehensive plan to guard their establishments round the clock. They are probably agreeable to cost-sharing also for rendering such security-related duties. More significantly, the nabbing of the known extraneous perpetrators of such crimes was demanded to address the problem at its source. But nothing to these effects has happened which point to unpardonable neglect in protecting the country's premier economic sector.
Owners and operators of RMG industries have, time and again, stressed that genuine workers with a stake in their job and earnings, can have no interest in physically damaging their source of sustenance by tearing the same down. Workers' grievances under all situations must be dealt with, through proper trade union laws and the mechanisms of collective bargaining. This is the only universally recognized proper or civilized method and anything else is unlawful and undesirable. But the unlawful activities have been spurred on, so far, from the relative hands-off policies of the concerned government agencies. Therefore, it is imperative for this sort of conduct on the part of the law-enforcing personnel, to change quickly with the premium being put on extending adequate protection to all RMG industries at the soonest.
The government will have to act decisively and at the fastest to prevent this most successful and gainful industry that Bangladesh could develop during the last 30 years from sinking. Actions are required mainly on two fronts : extending adequate physical security to the sector through much improved law enforcement activities that should include raising and deployment of a special force to give round the clock security to this sector; and, providing a package of official incentives to it so that this sector can acquire the badly needed competitiveness against its rivals.
A large number of garments industries were, again, vandalised at Ashulia-Savar recently. These industries suffered attacks on their premises, equipment and finished goods in varying degrees. The claimed workers' discontent linked to the violence, has apparently subsided. But the same has certainly not died down.
Tendencies to vandalise garments producing factories are there and the trouble-makers would in all likelihood be looking for opportunities to engage in mischief afresh. That there is an element of calculated game behind the wings, is without any doubt. This view is accepted as a credible one by several studies not only by the industry's operators but also from the impartial investigations of security agencies. The investigations reportedly found out repeatedly evidences of the best factories, in terms of paying their workers in time and adequately, getting targeted for attacks, mostly on no credible grounds. The involvement of some extraneous elements was also transparent in some such incidents.
This is important on the part of the government to provide physical security to garments industries that is the source of livelihood for at least 8.0 million people directly and indirectly and yields some 70 per cent of the country's foreign currency earnings. This sector is just too pivotal to be allowed to be progressively undermined by any trouble-mongering by vested interests getting encouraged by dilly-dallying and gaps between what the law enforces pledge they would do and the actual steps taken by them to that end.
Readymade garments (RMG) exporters have been imploring that government's security agencies should draw up a comprehensive plan to guard their establishments round the clock. They are probably agreeable to cost-sharing also for rendering such security-related duties. More significantly, the nabbing of the known extraneous perpetrators of such crimes was demanded to address the problem at its source. But nothing to these effects has happened which point to unpardonable neglect in protecting the country's premier economic sector.
Owners and operators of RMG industries have, time and again, stressed that genuine workers with a stake in their job and earnings, can have no interest in physically damaging their source of sustenance by tearing the same down. Workers' grievances under all situations must be dealt with, through proper trade union laws and the mechanisms of collective bargaining. This is the only universally recognized proper or civilized method and anything else is unlawful and undesirable. But the unlawful activities have been spurred on, so far, from the relative hands-off policies of the concerned government agencies. Therefore, it is imperative for this sort of conduct on the part of the law-enforcing personnel, to change quickly with the premium being put on extending adequate protection to all RMG industries at the soonest.
The government will have to act decisively and at the fastest to prevent this most successful and gainful industry that Bangladesh could develop during the last 30 years from sinking. Actions are required mainly on two fronts : extending adequate physical security to the sector through much improved law enforcement activities that should include raising and deployment of a special force to give round the clock security to this sector; and, providing a package of official incentives to it so that this sector can acquire the badly needed competitiveness against its rivals.