Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association will launch Center of Excellence for Bangladesh Apparel Industry (CEBAI) to improve productivity through research and development.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is scheduled to inaugurate the project simultaneously with the opening of the two-day Dhaka Apparel Summit on Sunday next at Bangabandhu International Conference Center.
The project is aimed at improving RMG productivity by creating skilled and semi-skilled workers through giving market-responsive training or providing support for skill development endeavour by any member company.
It will also research the challenges and ways to overcome them, policy recommendations, product diversification and wage mechanism.
The Centre of Excellence (COE) project also aims to produce 6,000 skilled workers with the help of the industry by next two years.
Swedish SIDA and retailer H&M are funding $1.5 million for the first three years of the project to be implemented by ILO.
SIDA’s financial support will be used for training and institutional development while H&M is supporting for infrastructure development and centre management.
“In true sense, there was no research on the RMG sector and the centre of excellence will research on a large scale the apparel industry to identify challenges and ways to overcome,” BGMEA President M Atiqul Islam told the Dhaka Tribune.
Bangladesh has moved out of low-end garment product to medium end and in order to raise the industry to a higher order of value chain, skilled manpower is required which would be met through the center of excellence project, Atiqul said.
Bangladesh is expecting to raise its RMG export to US$50 billion by 2021.
For meeting the growing global demand and export target, the country will need 3.5 million skilled and semi-skilled workers by next seven years.
Meanwhile, two million young people enter labor market every year, but there is no effective strategy to provide demand-based and market-oriented employment for these huge potential workforces.
“Bangladesh’s RMG workers’ productivity is around 20% less than other competitors and we need to reach the peak through the COE initiative,” BGMEA Vice-President Reaz Bin Mahmood told the Dhaka Tribune.
“The project will formulate curriculum, carry out research on what we want in future and work on heal and occupational safety.”
Reaz said in the meantime, RMG sector is going on automation, which will help workers gain skill.
Bangladesh witnessed significant growth in RMG sector but the skilled labour growth did not take place in line with that, said Reaz.