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A lot of effort is on to improve fully export-oriented factories; but industrial safety continues to be a risk in Bangladesh's tier 2 and 3 factories

• By  Textile Excellence
• April 29, 2014

Rodney James Reed, Managing Director, Reed Consulting Bangladesh Ltd. "enables businesses in Bangladesh to be socially responsible, sustainable and profitable". Reed Consulting provides a complimentary range of specialised professional consulting and training services in cleaner production, energy efficiency, occupational safety and health, fire safety, improving relationships between workers and management and factory productivity improvement. In conversation with Textile Excellence.

What is your opinion about the Bangladesh RMG sector's status of compliances?

Some of the Bangladesh RMG factories can compete in terms of safety, energy efficiency and quality with RMG factories anywhere in the world. For some others, there are challenges in meeting compliance and safety standards. Factory owners already supplying to large European and North American brands were endeavoring to improve their efficiency, safety and profitability before the horrors of Tazreen and Rana Plaza. Now, fire and other safety considerations have been prioritised in the garment sector in Bangladesh.There are many engineering inspectors in the country, some working for the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety and the European Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh. There are evidently continuing discussions about the safety standard specification but improvement work is already underway. It is now evident that besides social compliance, for the brand today compliance on fire safety standards and implementation and building integrity inspections and remediation works are also a priority.

What are the challenges the RMG sector faces in meeting environmental standards?

Reed Consulting Bangladesh Ltd working as a service provider for South Asia Enterprise Development Facility (SEDF) and International Finance Corporation (IFC) in the Cleaner Production and Partnership for Cleaner Textiles (PaCT) projects have enabled factories to make significant savings in both energy and water. In the RMG sector, significant savings have been made in lighting e.g. replacing T8 tube lights and their magnetic ballasts by T5 tubelights with electronic ballasts. Similarly significant savings have been made when replacing clutch drive motors with sewing machine servo motors. In the washing, dyeing, finishing sector, factories have been able to reduce water consumption from 300+ litres per kilo to under 100 litres per kilo. Others are already moving down towards the intended 70 litre per kilo target encouraged by the Water Footprint Network. There are still many factories which are wasteful of gas and water and chemicals and so are losing profitability. Also a great deal of heat that is capable of being recycled is being lost to the atmosphere through boiler and generator chimneys and from generator jacket cooling. Factories that waste water and chemicals inside their dye houses and washing plants will probably also be polluting the neighboring rivers and water bodies because their ETP is under-sized or inefficient. The Department of Environment (DOE) water quality discharge standards are quite relaxed in Bangladesh but still prove a challenge for some textile companies. When the DOE tightens the standards and recruits more inspectors for environment control, many factories will face real challenges.

What is the level of CSR that the Bangladesh industry follows?

Bangladesh CSR maybe characterized as being in a "primitive" state of development because CSR is still confused with corporate philanthropy. A great deal of money is donated to work on causes by businesses in the textile sector and a lot more money is donated to causes in the community by the banking sector. However, international standard SR as set out in the key themes and key principles of ISO 260000 shows that investment in the community is only a small aspect of what it means for a company to be socially responsible. International standard CSR is carried out inside the factory walls as well as in the community. This more advanced SR includes ensuring good occupational safety and health for workers, seeks to minimise waste of natural resources e.g. gas and water, it seeks to minimise pollution caused by industrial processing and most of all it seeks to minimise the wastage of human talent and ability. Reed Consulting Bangladesh provides interactive training courses and seminars for SR development and regularly circulates e-briefings on SR and uses the company website www.reedconsultingbd.com to promote SR inside and outside the factory gates.

What is the level of IT adoption in the garment industry?

Many top of the range factories in Bangladesh have recognised the usefulness of IT systems such as enterprise resource planning software and are making good use of technology in controlling their business processes and in controlling their energy consumption. The best of the dye houses in Bangladesh are using central dye house controllers with the relevant software and also automated and check weigh systems for full quality control in their processing. With textile worker wages rising in Bangladesh and full subsidies again about to be decreased, factory owners need to look at every area for efficiency improvement and adopting new technology in the process areas is part of this. However it is important that investment in new process technology is also matched with investment in technologies and software that provide management with detailed and reliable overview of their business and its profitability. There is an old management adage "look with your feet" which means that managers should not rely on watching video screens and reading computer spreadsheets but should walk in the factory production floors both to build and maintain relationships with workers and to look for productivity improvements.

Your perception of the situation in the Bangladesh RMG industry, following the industrial accidents?

In order to retain and improve on the level of purchasing by North American and European garment brands, there is no alternative to cooperating in inspections for fire and building safety and social compliance. There is an on-going debate about fire safety standards in a least developed country e.g. the necessity of a water sprinkler system on all floors of a building and the usefulness of fire doors. A great deal of time and effort is being directed to improving factories that are already fully focused on the export market. There continues to be a risk in Tier 2 and 3 factories, factories informally sub-contracting to compliant factories and in factories dyeing or washing or garment making for the local market.Worker safety is a high level concern for retail garment customers in North America and Europe and in the same way that ending child labour in the garment factories was 'non-negotiable', these retail customers and the brands they buy from expect factories that have good fire prevention measures and good fire evacuation and fire control. Investing in fire safety is also a business priority because it protects the investment already made in machinery and stock and premises. New factories need to be designed and built in ways that are fully compliant with international standards, factories designed for their purpose currently in use need to be improved to an acceptable standard. Some factories in unsuitable buildings will need to be relocated and run the risk of orders being withdrawn if they fail to shift their production to safe buildings. Thorough building inspection and careful implementation of fire standards should prevent major fires and building collapses but there is still the risk of damage to 'Brand Bangladesh' if the smaller non-compliant producers for the local market are not enabled to reach acceptable standards in terms of fire and building safety and social compliance.              

Textile Excellence