If Bangladesh Government’s stance on western apparel retailers’ bodies is something to go by, the stint of The Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety and Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, may end in 2018 itself! This was informed by Bangladesh’s Commerce Minister Tofail Ahmed during a meeting with a visiting delegation of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in Dhaka recently.
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“In 2018, we will take our own responsibility… The Accord and Alliance are not present anywhere else in the world. They will not be here in Bangladesh after 2018,”Ahmed reportedly underlined at a meeting with the ILO delegation.
It may be mentioned here that tenure of Accord (a platform of 200 Europe-based retailers) and Alliance (another platform of 28 North American retailers) that have legally binding agreements signed by a total of 228 foreign retailers in the aftermath of the Rana Plaza collapse in 2013 to fix the electrical, fire and structural faults in the garment factories from which they source, would end in June 2018.
Also Read – Accord and Alliance warn 37 apparel makers
After the departure of the two platforms – which together have reportedly inspected a total of 2,198 factories so far according to the Commerce Minister – the proposed remediation coordination cell will monitor the safety progress of the structures, maintained a senior official of the Labour and Employment Ministry.
It may be mentioned here that Accord and Alliance have courted controversy since the onset, including allegations of duplication in follow-up inspections of those factories which produce for the both, owing to lack of consensus between the auditing entities, as levelled by some factory owners.
