‘Poor safety maintenance, lack of monitoring responsible for industrial accidents'

Department of Inspection for Factories and Establishments (DIFE), the regulatory authorities to ensure safe and decent workplaces for workers, currently has only 314 inspectors to look into the safety in more than 0.53 million factories including garment, shops and other establishments.  

Poor safety maintenance and lack of regular monitoring are responsible for the industrial accidents in the country’s readymade garment (RMG) and other non-RMG sectors.

Besides, 22.5 per cent out of the 4000 RMG factories still remain outside the inspection purview.

The statistics and observations were disclosed on Sunday at a virtual dialogue on ‘Industrial Safety of the RMG Sector during the Post-Accord-Alliance Period’ jointly organised by Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) and  Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) Bangladesh.

Member of CPD Board of Trustees and former advisor to the caretaker government Syed Manzur Elahi chaired the dialogue while representatives from garment factory owners, workers and ILO spoke there.

Speaking at the dialogue, DIFE Inspector General Md Nasir Uddin Ahmed blamed the shortage of workforce for proper safety oversees in the country’s different industrial sectors.

He said a total of 89,979 RMG, non-RMG factories, shops and other establishments are registered with the DIFE while the number of non-registered factories and establishments are about 4,40,830.

“There are only 314 labour inspectors against 575 posts,” he said.   

Presenting a research finding, CPD Research Director Dr Khondaker Golam Moazzem said a section of factories—about 22.5 per cent out of the 4,000 garment factories are still outside the purview of any inspection—Accord, Alliance and National initiative.

Industrial safety in the RMG sector has been passing a critical stage with lack of proper coordination and proper monitoring and enforcement which are likely to be the reasons behind rising industrial accidents, he said adding the post-Accord-Alliance period of safety related activities in the RMG sector could not maintain the standards of that of accord-alliance period.

“DIFE remains fully responsible for safety in all factories and establishments,” he added.

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