FROM PAGE B4

contamination and the lack of logistics and infrastructure to protect them in a contagious environment is a big threat to our economic stability and sustainability.

Undoubtedly, the RMG industry has proved its resilience in preventing infections within the industry through a wholehearted response by the entrepreneurs, workers and employees by strictly following the health protocol. But the question remains around the hygiene of the places where they reside, the sanitation facilities and the transportation.

Similarly, we need to know the status of their other fundamental necessities, including nutrition and education. All these require having a data repository of the workers so that it can be used to formulate policies and plan development activities better. While pursuing the vision of Digital Bangladesh, having a demographic/socioeconomic/livelihood-based profiling of the workers digitally bears significant strategic importance.

With that view, the BGMEA has taken an initiative in collaboration with the Brac University to develop a digital repository of the workforce of the RMG industry.

This includes the number of workers and their personal profile, including age, sex, marital status, information on infant and child, origin, residence, education, financial and digital literacy; professional profile, including skill competency and experience; health profile, including blood group, BMI (body mass index), health and nutrition-related aspects; and financial inclusion.

Thus, a digital repository or census for the RMG workforce is very important to ensure that the industry has an accurate and up-to-date scenario of its workers. This will help minimise the misinformation about the sector.

It is important to have such a database using appropriate technologies like the Geographic Information System (GIS) so that new categories of data can be collated in additional layers, and those are comparable and can be updated at fixed intervals.

The repository will be a useful tool to analyse the pattern of workers health and nutrition-related issues such as non-communicable and contagious diseases and maternity-related complications, hygiene-related issues at the workplace and at residence, food habits, access to healthcare facilities and expenses. It can also help assess the scope of re-skilling and up-skilling of the workers and employees.

Developing such a repository will be a huge task and will require collaboration from stakeholders and development partners. In this phase of our economic transition, workers are our major strength and it would continue to remain so in the next few decades. Therefore, investing in them can’t be low profile and this can’t be done uninformed.

Under the visionary leadership of honourable Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Bangladesh’s economy has made remarkable progress over the past 13 years, and consequently our per capita income and standard of living have gone higher. To keep the momentum of the positive transformation in our economy and cope with the changes, strategic engagement and deployment of resources will be critical, and information will be vital for this.

The author is the president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers & Exporters Association