A potential long-term solution to ensure the health and safety of RMG workers
While working conditions in RMG factories have improved dramatically since the Rana Plaza disaster, ensuring adequate compensation for injured and deceased workers is still a long way off
The RMG industry has undergone a transformation in terms of working conditions in factories, the next step would be to find long-term solutions to protect workers against such disasters. Photo: Mumit M
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The RMG industry has undergone a transformation in terms of working conditions in factories, the next step would be to find long-term solutions to protect workers against such disasters. Photo: Mumit M
Jasmine woke up late. She had a fever and was late for work too. She didn’t have time for breakfast, instead she rushed to the door to catch a bus. When she entered her workplace and signed the logbook on April 24, 2013, it was exactly 8:40 a.m.
“I made it on time,” said Jasmine, a former garment worker at Phantom Apparels.
But arriving on time caused one of the most untimely things in her life. Her supervisor was supposed to give her a new job that day, so she was waiting at the headmaster’s table.
“Sitting there, I almost dozed off. The next minute, when I came to myself, I felt things shake. At first I thought I was a little dizzy but I felt. quickly realized that it was the building, ”she recalls.
“It was crashing. I screamed but I couldn’t move. The next moment a pillar fell on top of me and something very sharp pricked my leg,” Jasmine said. .
Phantom Apparels was located on the fourth floor of the now infamous Rana Plaza factory complex.
Photo: Mumit M
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Photo: Mumit M
Jasmine was taken to the hospital. Her treatment lasted about 18 months at no cost, but it was never the same. “My legs are there, but they give me immense pain. Sometimes I feel like it would have been nice if they had been cut,” Jasmine said, in a breath.
Since then, Jasmine has not been able to resume a normal life or return to work. She was made physically disabled, treated as a burden, and began to live a life of loss.
The two disasters at Rana Plaza and the Tazreen factory fire in 2012 and 2013 – which killed 1,232 workers and injured 2,650 workers – have severely damaged the reputation of Bangladesh’s RMG industry, the world’s second largest exporter of clothing. He exposed to the world the inhumane conditions in which Bangladeshi workers worked in some of these factories, as well as the lack of protections given to these workers in the country’s labor law.
Not only had all of these workers lost their lives or their physical abilities, but the country’s laws and programs were doing very little to compensate them for their losses. At the time, international labor organizations, global labels, the government of Bangladesh and BGMEA came together to design a compensation package for victims of the biggest workplace injury in history.
Since then, the RMG industry has undergone a transformation in terms of working conditions in factories, as well as a change in laws to provide protections for workers. Of course, the next step would be to find long-term solutions to protect workers from such disasters.
A pilot project in Bangladesh called the Employment Injury Scheme (EIS) seeks to do just that. It is expected to be implemented in 2022-2023 – it will last three to five years and be fully funded by international brands and central BGMEA funds.
Basically, EIS is a calculated percentage of workers’ wages that are paid by employers. Each employer will pay 0.033% of each employee’s salary to the central fund and in times of crisis it will be provided to workers according to their needs. In this process, employers (small / medium / large; solvent / insolvent) are expected to contribute in a reasonable way and protect the respective workers equally.
Once the pilot is completed, the clothing owners will continue this project – which brings us to the question of whether the owners will be willing or able to pay this percentage.
Photo: Mumit M
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Photo: Mumit M
“The pilot project is supported by international brands and the central fund. We [BGMEA] already contribute to the central fund. So after three to five years, when this project is up and running, there will be a structured system in place. Hopefully by then the owners won’t have to struggle to make it work anymore. “- Asif Ibrahim, Director of BGMEA
Asif Ibrahim, Director of BGMEA and Managing Director of Keilock Newage Bangladesh Ltd. replied: “The pilot project is managed by the international brands and the central fund. We [BGMEA] already contribute to the central fund. So after three to five years, when this project is up and running, there will be a structured system in place.
Hopefully by then, owners won’t have to struggle to make it work anymore. ”
Since the collapse of Rana Plaza in 2013, the ILO has been working with the government of Bangladesh and other industrial partners to improve working conditions in the ready-to-wear (RMG) sector of Bangladesh.
The EIS was offered in accordance with the Employment Injury Benefits Convention, 1964 (Convention 121). It is based on three pillars – prevention, rehabilitation and compensation – beneficial to both responders and workers. It is mainly aimed at workers affected by accidents at work and occupational diseases who are entitled to medical care, rehabilitation services and compensation (loss of earnings).
“The pilot will initially include factories covering around 150,000 workers. It is divided into two phases. Phase I will develop recommendations to improve (if necessary) the existing practice of temporary incapacity. It will also work with factories to improve the capacity of corporate clinics.
Based on these recommendations, Phase II will continue to transform the lessons learned from the trial into a sustainable, national program fully integrated into the national normative framework, ”explained Tuomo Poutiainen, Director of the ILO Country Office for Bangladesh.
Photo: Mumit M
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Photo: Mumit M
This year in March, the Institute of Health Economics at Dhaka University (DU) revealed that 40% of workers in the country’s RMG industry, out of 42 lakh, are deprived of medical treatment due to the high cost of health care.
Dr Ruhul Abid, president and founder of Health and Education for All (HAEFA) in an interview earlier this year with The Business Standard said he speculated that around 60% to 70% of workers in this sector are deprived of health care.
“I think that at best 10 to 20% of factories guarantee this fundamental right [healthcare] for their workers and I doubt even that one percent of our textile workers have health insurance coverage, ”he said in the interview.
A letter of intent for the HIA was signed between the governments of Bangladesh, Germany and the ILO in 2015, but it took a long time to make so much progress. Later, in early 2020, a broad consensus was reached with employers to start a trial of an EIS project. However, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the initiative faced a setback.
The project plans to introduce an injury-based compensation approach for long-term compensation and health care for workers with permanent disabilities, and long-term compensation for family members of workers. deceased workers. In the latter case, the compensation would be calculated on the basis of the loss of earnings and paid periodically.
Today, the ILO and the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ) are helping the MoLE to develop and implement a trial on an EIS to show its benefits to employers, workers, brands and buyers and to the government. In parallel, they are working on the administrative mechanism of the EIS system and the organizational agreement to establish a permanent EIS.
Quamrul Ahsan, Advisory Member of the Bangladesh Institute for Social Studies (BILS) and Federation President Jatio Sramik, said: “Why has such an initiative been taken after all these years? Usually, in countries with an EIS system, brands do not face any legal risk in the event of an industrial accident or occupational disease for which the regime takes responsibility.
Brands and buyers have been putting constant pressure on this industry for its consecutive bad incidents of late. I don’t think the government has the slightest goodwill towards the workers, otherwise how could so many accidents happen in such a short time. “
The government, for its part, has provided in the National Social Security Strategy (NSSS 2015) a national social insurance scheme (NSIS) covering maternity, unemployment, work accidents, illness, disability for working-age population as well as the well-being of workers.
When outlining the NSSS initiatives, Quamrul replied, “Before we implement anything, we should review the state of implementation of government initiatives. Take, for example, the Factory and Establishment Inspection Department (DIFE). their designated tasks? Are they implementing existing strategies and laws? Once we have made sure that DIFE is working, we can determine which system or strategy will work for us. But I appreciate it; at least some action has been taken due to international pressure. Maybe this time things will change. ”Hopefully.
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