Garment
factory owners on Monday sought more low-cost financing from the North American
retailers’ group for the remediation work of the small and medium factories.
In
a meeting with high officials of Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety and
factory authorities Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association
vice-president Shahidullah Azim said a good member of factory owners had been
suffering from fund crisis and the remediation work in their units were being
progressed slowly.
‘I
will request the Alliance to arrange more fund as the remediation work is very
costly and small and medium factories could not bear the cost,’ he said.
The
BGMEA arranged the meeting with the Alliance and factory authorities after
getting a list of 110 factories that did not conduct Detailed Engineering
Assessment in their factory buildings as per recommendation made by Alliance
inspection teams.
Recently,
the Alliance has sent the list to the BGMEA saying that implementation of
Corrective Action Plan in the factories are going in a slow pace due to lack of
DEA report.
The
BGMEA informed the meeting that a total of 67 factories had completed the DEA
and rest of the factories were in the process.
Following
the initial safety assessment the Alliance has so far conducted remediation
verification visits in 141 factories and found progress is not satisfactory,
Alliance managing director M Rabin said at the meeting.
‘Even
we found only one per cent progress in some factories,’ he said.
Rabin
said 50 per cent of the Alliance member factories in Chittagong achieved
remediation progress below 30 per cent in four months.
He
said the Alliance was going to launch a new credit facility for the factory
owners and the programme might be launched by end of April.
Rabin
told New Age that the amount of the fund might be around $37 million.
After
the accident of Rana Plaza building collapse in April 2013 that killed more
than 1,100 people, mostly garment workers, the North American retailers
established the Alliance.
The
initiative launched inspection programmes in the Bangladeshi RMG factories from
where their members procure products and completed primary safety assessments
in its listed factories of more than 600 in number by July 2014. (Source: New
Age, March 31, 2015)