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Safety vs. cents and dollars

The writer is Assistant Editor, The Daily Star.
THE debate over 'Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh' is an understandable one. Inspection standards specified by Accord, which is a platform of some 150 European clothing retailers and brands, are being termed as too stringent by the garments manufacturers' representative body BGMEA. One of the sticking points is the hiring of foreign experts and engineers for inspection. This of course has got not only BGMEA but also legal experts up in arms with regards to how foreign experts can be brought in to inspect a sector without prior government approval. Legalities aside, precisely why foreign experts are needed as opposed to hiring local engineers from the very outset is also somewhat baffling.
There exists serious debate on the timeline for safety inspection and remediation process. While the panel hopes to inspect 200 factories initially totaling some 1,500 factories by September, 2014, it is still unclear as to who will foot the bill for amendments being proposed.There is no question as to what needs to be done to make the factory workplaces safe for workers. A repetition on the scale of Rana Plaza is unthinkable both for the sector and the foreign brands that source garments from Bangladesh. Yes, there is need for changes to be made. Sadly, changes will come at a cost, both in time and money. Though the
Accord has stressed on credible inspections by "a qualified safety inspector, with fire and building safety expertise and impeccable credentials, and who is independent of and not concurrently employed by companies, trade unions or factories," the question really is whether a pool of inspectors is readily available in Bangladesh. And if not, why haven't stakeholders (like the government) been taken into confidence when floating an international tender to hire foreign inspectors?
Then there is the question of structural flaws in the design of buildings that the majority of factories suffer from. It is here that the crunch will be felt most of all.
According to Alliance for Bangladesh Workers Safety, a platform of 26 North American clothing retailers, 74% of the garment factories were established before the enforcement of the Bangladesh National Building Code (2006). Indeed, the problems do not end there. Apparently "most factories do not have any drawing design, soil test reports, electrical line outlines." Hence, the whole question of satisfactorily carrying out inspections is thrown in disarray.
A host of recommendations, including the installation of sprinklers, adequate fire doors and exits, rewiring of electrical circuitry, smoke control, etc., have been made which factories must redress in the immediate future. All very nice on paper, but two questions arise out of these requirements. One, precisely who is going to pay workers' wages while the factory is shut for retrofitting and two, who pays for retrofitting? That is a question that keeps coming back to haunt us. The reality on the ground is that the industry will not foot the bill alone. This is especially true as the new wage board is in various stages of implementation. With the sector still coming to terms with the losses counted during the 3-month long political gridlock running up to the elections, and foreign buyers yet to make financial commitments to that effect, this is a plan of action that is not truly feasible. Expecting changes in infrastructure overnight is unrealistic. For all practical purposes, buyers need to set staggered targets over the next five years for the sector to recover. Retrofitting is expensive and technically cumbersome, especially when we talk about a large number of factory buildings currently being rented as garment factories.
At the end of the day, safety does come first. Therefore,
the most vulnerable factories should be shifted, if need be, retrofitted. However, given that many of the buildings were not designed or built to any industrial specifications, many of them may not really be worth retrofitting. Rather, constructing them anew is a better option.
Again, both the government and industry need to
go back to the basics - land use plans should be followed. One should not raise a huge building in the middle of a residential/mixed area for use as a garment factory. A factory building is not a residential or commercial building. It requires careful designing supported with all necessary facilities that include access roads, safety arrangements, and power, water and sewage systems. Unfortunately, our building owners build buildings for multifarious uses, which include renting out to garment factories. So the problems are inseparable parts of the practices.
In the final analysis, the solution lies with special industrial facilities buildings in designated areas. Desirably, they will be located away from the middle of cities. In the interim, industries should, in coordination with the government, do the needful to secure safety of the buildings and overall occupational safety for workers.
The writer is Assistant Editor, The Daily Star.