Bangladeshi garment workers shout slogan after setting fire to a garment factory during a protest demanding better wages, at Tejgon industrial area, in Dhaka
Bangladesh said it has met the conditions put forward by the United States for better safety and workers’ rights in its factories that were essential to regain preferential trade status the impoverished South Asian nation lost in 2013 after two disasters killed 1,500 garment workers.
The preferential trade status does not cover Bangladesh’s influential garment industry, which helps the country earn USD25 billion annually and mainly exports to the United States and Europe. But Dhaka has long lobbied for its garment industry to have duty-free access to the United States and the lost status was seen as a big blow to that goal.
The government said in its statement this week that all of the 16 conditions set by the U.S. have been met. A delegation of the U.S. Trade Representative’s office is visiting Bangladesh to review improvements in safety standards at factories and changes to legal documents allowing for wider workers’ rights.
The conditions are needed to regain the Generalized System of Preferences benefit under which the U.S. allows imports of some 5,000 goods from 122 of the world’s poorest countries with low- or zero-tariff benefits.
The trade benefit was withdrawn after the collapse of Rana Plaza, a building complex housing five garment factories outside the capital, Dhaka in 2013. The Rana Plaza disaster and a fire at a Tazreen Fashions factory in November 2012 left about 1,500 workers dead and hundreds injured.
The garment industry is crucial to Bangladesh’s economy as it employs about 4 million workers, mostly rural women, and many other sectors including banks are heavily dependent on it.
The government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has been heavily criticized by the opposition for its “failure” to regain the lost trading status.
In 2012, the total value of U.S. imports from Bangladesh under the GSP benefit was $34.7 million with tobacco, sports equipment, porcelain china and plastic products topping the list.
In August, the United States renewed the trade benefit for 122 countries until 2017, but the trade representative’s office said Bangladesh needed to do more.
A government statement said Bangladeshi officials told the visiting American delegation this week that it has fulfilled the conditions required.
The government has so far shut down some 364 apparel units for lack of sufficient safety measures. It has amended labor laws, enacting new rules for allowing workers to form unions, increased the number of factory inspectors and settled many criminal cases against trade union leaders who said the charges were meant to silence them.
Authorities say some 500 factory-based trade unions have now been registered and workers’ welfare associations have been formed in special export zones.
A leading workers’ rights activist says that while Bangladesh has made some improvements, a lot more needs to be done to ensure the safety of the country’s factory workers.
“If you talk about safety and structural aspects of the factories, no doubt, there is major improvement, but if you take the issues of freedom of association and workers’ right to bargain collectively, we still lag behind,” Kalpona Akter, executive director of Bangladesh Center for Workers’ Solidarity, told The Associated Press. AP
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