Complaints about safety in Bangladesh factories hit a high in 2018

DHAKA: Garment factory workers in Bangladesh filed a record number of complaints about safety – 662 – last year, showing that a mechanism set up by European fashion brands to improve working conditions was proving effective, trade unions said.

The Bangladesh Accord was signed by some 200 global brands and unions in 2013 after the Rana Plaza disaster, when about 1,100 people were killed after a garment factory complex collapsed - sparking outrage over poor working conditions.

The legally- binding accord, which covers almost 1,700 factories, has signatory clothing brands and retailers from about 20 countries, such as Britain’s supermarket group Tesco, Swedish fashion group H&M and German sportswear giant Adidas.

The Accord has received 1,152 complaints since starting work in 2014, many relating to fire and structural hazards, it said in a report on Monday, adding that it had made more than 100 factories ineligible to supply its signatory firms.

“Compared to other complaint mechanisms, the owners take the complaints filed in the Accord a bit more seriously,” Amirul Haque Amin, head of the National Garment Workers Federation, Bangladesh’s largest union, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“They know that the buyers are also a stakeholder here and if they don’t address the problem properly, their business may be affected,” he said, referring to the Accord’s ban on non-compliant factories supplying its signatory buyers. — Reuters