Dhaka wants Accord, Alliance to end activities by Dec

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State minister for labour and employment Mujibul Haque Chunnu on Tuesday said the government wants Accord and Alliance to pack their activities in Bangladesh by December next as they are now well-equipped to ensure safety of the garment factories.

“I can assure you that no incident like Rana Plaza will happen in our country as the government has set up Remediation Coordination Cell (RCC) to ensure long-term sustainability and fire safety,” he told a press conference in the city on the garment sector reform activities.

Mujibul Haque said a total of 3,780 RMG factories have preliminarily been assessed in terms of fire, electrical safety and structural integrity following the initiatives of Accord, Alliance and National Initiative (NI) after the Rana Plaza incident. The remediation work is going on under these three initiatives.”

He also said the RCC is capable of monitoring and overseeing the remediation progress of factories under national initiative and taking over the responsibility of factories assessed by Accord and Alliance. “So there’s no need of the existence of the Accord and Alliance.”

The state minister said the government has set a deadline for a smooth transition of Accord by December this year as they have completed the reform activities in their assigned 2,559 factories.

He, however, said the Accord and Alliance can work under the supervision of RCC if they want to continue their activities.

The government has recruited 60 engineers recently in addition to existing 26 engineers. Besides, ILO is already in an agreement to provide 476 engineers, Mujibul said.

He said the government is fully committed to ensure decent work and safe working environment and relevant measures to enhance institutional capacity-building of the Department of Labour (DoL) and the Department of Inspection for Factories and Establishments (DIFE).

Commerce minister Tofail Ahmed also spoke at the programme.