To help factories reduce audit fatigue and support facilities to implement at apparel & footwear facilities, the Social & Labor Convergence Program (SLCP) is holding free training in Kannada.
Kannada is a major language in Karnataka– having garment manufacturing hubs like Bengaluru – and at the same time is also spoken by linguistic minorities in the states of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Telangana.
SLCP is an initiative led by the world’s leading manufacturers, brands, retailers, industry groups, service providers and civil society organisations, to eliminate audit fatigue by replacing current proprietary tools with a Converged Assessment Framework.
Its aim is to improve working conditions by freeing up resources that were previously wasted on compliance audits to be redirected towards the improvement of social and labour conditions.
In a statement, SLCP said that since launching operations in 2019, it has quickly scaled with over 4,000 facilities worldwide completing an SLCP-verified assessment in 2021. Over 55 brands, retailers and standard holders are already publicly committing to accept SLCP-verified data from their suppliers instead of requesting a separate audit.
India was one of the first countries where the Converged Assessment Framework became available and is a priority country for SLCP.
“The Gap is fully committed to adopting SLCP in order to reduce the proliferation of social audits. We are therefore pleased that SLCP is providing this free training to support our suppliers in Karnataka to have a smooth experience when they complete an SLCP assessment and verification. We encourage facilities to attend these sessions if they would like to find out more about SLCP,” says Sharmila Nithyanand, Program Manager, Supplier Sustainability at Gap Inc.
