We must tell the world the facts of life about our garments sector separating the facts from the make believe
Undeserved publicities against our garments industry
S M Nurul Huda
Most of the time on reading newspapers in Bangladesh or watching the electronic media, one cannot be blamed for getting afflicted by a notion as if the garments sector is but one monstrous creation inspired by sheer greed of its entrepreneurs and sustained by their devilish ways of exploiting the workers to maximize their profits. There would not be so much to be concerned by this one track publicity but for the fact that the same is now poised to strike a death blow to a sector that has over time evolved as one of the few pillars on which the countrys economy presently stands.
We cannot blame foreigners for putting into sharp focus mainly the negatives of the garments industry which then allows vested interest groups abroad to pile all sorts of undue pressures on this industry stating that all truths are on their side and that Bangladeshs own media has been supporting their views so overwhelmingly.
Thus, one comes to know that even the Pope described our garments workers as modern day slaves and a store in Canada displaying before it a notice board to tell customers that it is no more keeping Bangladeshi made garment products as protest against inhuman treatment of garments sector workers in Bangladesh.
The net output of these publicities has been vitiating the image of our garments industry to the extent that government in the USA, a major buyer of our garments, is under intense pressure from different lobbies to retaliate against Bangladesh by cancellation of whatever concessions it has been enjoying in its trade in garments with that country.
Bangladesh is now suffering the cancellation of its GSP facility in trading with the USA. The latest is European Union (EU) has also warned Bangladesh with the withdrawl of their GSP they provide to Bangladeshi garments products. The EU is the largest single buyer of our garments products and the USA is the second largest buyer.
Certainly, the interests of our garments sector will likely be greatly undermined if the EU threat is also carried out. Thus, it is so very important that on our part in Bangladesh, we should do rightly what we can to clear blames on our garments industry instead of helping a process to further debilitate it with one side injurious publicities.
Facts about our garments sector need to be separated from mere fancy, just like the grain from the chaff. Any such sincere exercise will show up that allegations of barbaric conditions in our garments industries suffer from the fallacy described in Logic as sweeping generalization. This fallacy underlines that you just cannot point to one or too few examples and claim that these are representative of or explain the entire phenomenon.
In other words, it is simply not fair to cite the example of some accidents in our garments industries at intervals (including at least one major one at Rana Plaza) and from that to draw the conclusion that all garments industries are well short of observing proper standards to be maintained at work places. Such a rabid conclusion is logically tenable.
But unfortunately, such a false perception about our garments sector as a whole, has come to stick in the minds of many in foreign countries and regrettably uncaring publicity in our own country has helped a great deal in the formation of this notion. There are but 5,500 garments industries of varying capacities in Bangladesh. Out of them at least one-third of them or 1,833 industries have been found in reliable surveys to be fully meeting the internationally expected standards of work place safety and in providing the decent minimum of wages to workers. Specially, in the large number of garments industries located in the export processing zones (EPZs), the conditions of work and financial and other compensations given to workers are considered to be comparable to sound international standards. Such standards are also maintained in many factories outside the EPZs.
The overall conditions in the rest of the industries are not all the same. Many are very close to attaining the standards of the first category while many are progressively getting closer. Only a small number out of the total can be considered as deficient in large measures but even the tracking down of these has started in zest and it is only a question of time before these would be bound to become compliant with expected standards from pressure both by the government and by the BGMEA, the association of the owners of garments industries themselves.
Besides, it should be abundantly clear that in the wake of the accidents at Tazreen and Rana Plaza and the bitter fall outs from the same in the international media and the importing countries, BGMEA and the government in their own interests would be up and doing to bring the non compliant remaining industries around to fulfilling compliance needs.
Even in the US-Bangladesh Partnership Dialogue held sometime ago, it was stated from the US side that their aim is helping in the improvement workers rights and better conditions for work but not at the cost of the industry itself. But such pious expressions of intent need to be reflected in activities at the field level. We have seen no sign yet from the US government that it is now in an agreeable form of mind to withdraw its GSP suspension order in relation to Bangladesh.
As for trade union rights in garments industries, the US will not accept anything short of full trade union rights although they know that our garments industry is still to graduate to a level when such rights would be fully and responsibly exercised by our workers. The workers have received limited trade union rights last year. But even after getting these rights, the workers have been showing their colours. The vandalizing, work stoppages and other acts of violence centred on the garments sector these days are exemplary of what these workers can do and their likely abuse of trade union rights particularly after being allowed to enjoy more of these rights.
The writer is a free lance journalist
