The second biggest sourcing office in Bangladesh in terms of volume and business, the US $ 800 million PDS Multinational Group (Norwest) has much in stake in the overall growth and development of the country’s apparel industry, not to mention its leadership role in giving it the correct guidance and direction, more so in the light of safety and compliance issues that have somewhat hamstrung the growth of the world’s preferred garmenting hub.
“After the Rana Plaza and Tazreen incidents, we were a little bit on the back foot, in an awkward situation. However, the overall compliance scenario is improving now; factories are increasingly becoming compliant and even getting more orders… Accord and Alliance have given a very good direction to the industry,” underlines Mustafizur Rahman, Executive Director, Compliance & Ethical Sourcing – PDS Multinational Group (Norwest), who does not overrule possible shortcomings in the western retailers associations’ compliance audits that have earned them the ire of the industry as according to him nothing man-made could be foolproof or perfect, but at the same time Mustafizur holds the media equally responsible for projecting things out of proportion at times.
Maintaining that the overall compliance levels in all South Asian countries are yet to reach the desired mark, the Executive Director of PDS Multinational Group calls upon compliance auditors to do their job keeping in mind the actual needs and requirements of the auditing exercise. “These days many compliance auditors are doing the job of factory inspectors and checking for issues that factory inspectors ought to check,” adding,
“The actual role of the auditors should be to check and evaluate the mindset of the management; how proactive they are when it comes to workers’ welfare and ensure that the management is not prone to taking advantage of loopholes of the law to deprive the workforce.”
The job of the compliance auditor thus essentially is to make certain that their associate factories are following the primary requirements of the law, which however is not happening in this industry still, holds Mustafizur.
Underlining that majority of the issues plaguing the industry are because of the different mindsets of the management and the workers; the only way, according to him, is to strike the right balance between these two major stakeholders, which however is not an easy proposition, Mustafizur admits. “The education level of the poor in this country who form the mainstay of the garment industry is very low and to be honest there is no mechanism from the Government either to teach them about their rights and duties… Had there been such a machinery, it would have helped in development of the industry and ensure better understanding and lesser conflicts between the workers and the management,” observes Mustafizur, highlighting educational institutes have a pivotal role to play in this direction.
“Like in India you have the NIFT which produces brilliant designers, but when it comes to Industrial Relationship and Labour Management there aren’t too many good institutes in Bangladesh or perhaps not even in India. We need some very good institutes to churn out well-trained and competent professionals who can work on these problem areas and change the existing scenario in labour management relationship.”
A member of Sedex and BSCI, PDS Multinational is very particular about compliance and cherry-picks manufacturing units that have achieved certain levels in compliance. “Any factory that wants to do business with PDS Group has to be compliant first. Once selected, we thoroughly assess the compliance scenario of the unit, its strengths and drawbacks, and after a proper evaluation, workout plans to improve the compliance by providing them guidelines and all possible support, including necessary training and even financial assistance to rev up the existing infrastructure, only after which we introduce them to the customers,” goes on Mustafizur, underlining that besides working in tandem with the units in building safety, fire safety and the likes, his team also liaises with authorities and personnel like Government’s local fire-fighting units and Factory Inspectors to discuss and make safety issues even better along with playing an important role in policy matters pertaining to safety issues like ensuring setting up of fire stations closer to garmenting hubs/factories to necessitate early and efficient fire fighting in case of fire break outs. However, the biggest challenge according to Mustafizur lies in convincing the factories to improve and accelerate compliance, which he says is a continuing process.
“The way compliance has developed since 1980s till now there is significant with palpable improvement. Earlier we used to deal with the child labour, and now we are talking about the advanced level of compliance, so improvement is definitely there. However, developments are not yet to the expected levels. Our biggest challenge is basically to develop the smaller factories, make them understand the importance of compliance and make sure that they follow the norms,” maintains the Compliance & Ethical Sourcing Executive Director, who is upbeat that compliance and workers’ welfare would get a facelift in the coming days with many retailers and buying offices spending on CSR activities including his own which runs a school in the heart of Dhaka city to provide free education to the workers’ children.
Fact file of PDS Multinational Group
- Has over 23 offices and 2,300 associates globally.
- Caters to over 160 leading retailers and brands worldwide.
- Expecting annual turnover in excess of US $ 800 million in 2015-16.
- Plans to achieve US $ 1 billion sales by FY 2016-17.
- Has manufacturing and sourcing operations in all key markets – China, Cambodia, Myanmar, Indonesia, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Turkey, and Pakistan, besides Egypt.
- Owns sample and product development centres in China, Hong Kong, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India and Turkey, producing over 10,000 new styles per month.
- Owns factories in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh with over 2,000 machines and production capacity of over 25 million pieces per annum.
- Planning to invest in another 10,000 new machines over the next 3 to 4 years to expand production capacity significantly.
- Has sales and marketing centres in USA, Canada, UK, Germany, Belgium, Spain, Chile, Australia and India.
- Has tie-up with EthicsPoint (Founded in 1999, EthicsPoint, Inc is a USbased corporation dealing in regulatory compliance software) to run a hotline to report any ethical violations within its global business or supply base.
- Runs a rigorous programme of on-going labour, human rights and environmental standards under which all of its vendor partners must sign and abide by its code of conduct, considered to be the strictest in the industry.
