In the past six months, a total of 82 industrial accidents have been reported in the national dailies; in other words, almost one incident occurred in every two days. The majority of these accidents are related to fire (52 accidents); other accidents involve electrical, boiler explosion, and related issues where these incidents caused deaths of 167 workers/people and injury of 256 workers/people. Major industrial zones Dhaka and adjacent areas (29), Narayanganj (10), Gazipur (8), and Chattogram (8) are accident-prone areas. Bangladesh’s budding reputation as an industrial hub will be at risk at regional and global levels if the increasing incidents are not addressed. In view of the occurrence at Hashem foods, the government has announced several initiatives—the most important of which is forming a 24-member committee to detect safety risks and issue and guide responsible agencies to take appropriate action. Bangladesh Investment Development Authority (BIDA) has been providing the lead role for this initiative. Still, despite the initiative, similar trends of accidents in the non readymade garments (RMG) factories are prevailing. Hence, the government needs to vouch for a strong commitment in order to undertake the monitoring tasks through proper institutional mechanisms by maintaining transparency and accountability.
In this context, the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) has initiated a monitoring initiative led by the civil society, on ‘Industrial Safety in non-RMG Enterprises and Establishments’ with a view to highlighting transparency, accountability, and efficiency in implementing safety measures. This is working as a complementary initiative along with those which have been undertaken by the public and private sectors as remedial measures. In this connection, this policy brief aims to review the BIDA-led initiative conducted on industrial safety in non-RMG enterprises, to identify weaknesses and challenges of the initiative, and to put forward necessary recommendations that will help improve the BIDA-led initiative to ensure workplace safety in non-RMG enterprises. This study is a part of the project “Industrial Safety of Non-RMG Enterprises and Workers: Monitoring Transparency, Accountability and Efficiency of Public Actions” undertaken by CPD in collaboration with Christian Aid.
Authors: Khondaker Golam Moazzem, Md. Salay Mostofa and Shah Md. Ahsan Habib
Publication Period: February 2022
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