Accord and Alliance have identified three concerns related with workers’ safety in the Bangladesh apparel factories.
They include exceeding the load-bearing of floors, flawed electrical wires and piling of finished goods in the stairs and floors.
Accord and Alliance, two groups of ready-made garment retailers, found it during their recent inspection of factories.
A press conference will be held on Tuesday in the city to present the inspection findings, a source concerned told the Dhaka Tribune.
“They (the factories) have too much weight (placed on floors), too much stock of machinery and too muck stock of finished goods on the floors and in the passages,” Rob Wayss, executive director (Bangladesh operations) of Accord, told the Dhaka Tribune.
The common fault with the power lines was the weakly placed wires on the walls and mess in switch boards, he said.
Piling of finished goods on the staircases and lack of fire exits were the common findings about fire safety.
“All factories must have fire doors so smokes and flames cannot come out to the stairs from the floors during fire incidents,” said Rob Wayss.
Accord has primarily suggested conducting maintenance of electrical wires, properly managing of loads on each floor and installing fire doors so that workers can see inside.
As of Friday, March 7, the Alliance has inspected over 240 factories while the Accord engineers inspected around 70 factories.
Following the findings of Accord inspection, a review panel asked two factories - Softex and Fame Sweater - to suspend production and retrofit them before.
The panel also directed Jeans Care, a RMG factory located in the city’s Tejgaon, to take immediate steps to improve safety standards. Otherwise the production will be closed.
On the other, Alliance did not find any factory, which needed retrofitting.
“During inspection, we did not find any factory which needed to be relocated or retrofitted,” said M Rabin, managing director of Alliance.
He said the culture of piling up finished goods on the floors and in the passage of exits would need to be changed.
Accord, a platform of 150 European retailers, launched on February 20 the first phase of inspection involving fire and structural integrity and inspected over 65 factories.
In the first phase, Accord has set a target of inspecting 200 apparel factories, from which its signatories source products.
The factories will be inspected in a four-week time from February 20.
The issue of fire and building safety came under the spotlight last year, following the catastrophic incident at the Rana Plaza building collapse that killed over 1,100 workers.
After the factory disaster, the retailers’ platform made a commitment to provide financial and technical supports to improve fire and building safety standard of RMG factories, from which they source products.
Accord will inspect 1,500 factories and Alliance over 600 factories following a common set of standards.