The Executive Director of Alliance for Bangladesh Workers Safety, James F Moriarty, yesterday said six RMG factories have completed 100% remediation work and ensured the highest international standard of safety, but the remediation job is going slowly.
The factories are—Green Textile Ltd, Kwun Tong Apparels Ltd, Laundry Industries, Lenny Apparels, Optimum Fashions Ltd and Uni Vogue Ltd.
According to the report, Alliance in 2014 completed safety inspections in 528 factories from which its signatories source products and started remediation verification visits this year.
Moriarty, also a former US ambassador to Bangladesh, came up with the comment at a press conference organised by the Alliance to inform the progress of inspection in the second year at a city hotel yesterday.
M Rabin, managing director of Alliance, was present at the conference.
The remediation is going on at a slow pace as it takes time to import fire doors, and lack of availability of safety equipment and expertise is another reason behind the slow progress, said Moriarty.
In the second year of Alliance, six factories completed all remediation works and ensured the highest international standards of safety, the former envoy said.
“The cost of doing business is also important in Bangladesh and we recognize it and have arranged financing facilities especially for small and medium RMG entrepreneurs to complete remediation.”
By making financing more widely available and affordable and working with factory owners to make necessary repairs, the Alliance is making factories safer for millions of workers, he added.
Alliance is providing $50m to Bangladesh RMG factories, from which the Alliance signatories source products, at a low interest rate through five local banks.
“We finance medium and small factories for ensuring remediation and the scheme will be finalised by the end of this month,” Janina Jaruzelski, Bangladesh mission director of the USAID, said at the press conference.
An Alliance source said USAID is likely to provide a total of $18m credit through local banks to help RMG owners.
Abdus Salam Murshedy, president of Exporters Association of Bangladesh (EAB), alleged that a good number of manufacturers are not getting the IFC fund for not being the clients of IFC-nominated banks.
He requested the Alliance to look into the issue and to ensure equal treatment in getting fund for all of its member factories to complete the remediation works.
In its second year, Alliance completed the first remediation verification visits in 528 factories and found that the remediation progress at 154 factories was less than 20% while 251 factories made progress between 21% to 40% and 133 between 41%– 60%.
The platform has so far completed the second remediation verification visits to only 17 factories, said the report.
