Social compliance becomes a household word

In 2006, a group of Bangladeshis who had all been involved with the readymade garment sector in one way or another for years were recruited by a Bangladeshi-German project to design and implement a social compliance training course and manual reflecting the reality of the Bangladeshi garment industry and in line with the Bangladesh Labour Law 2006. The result was a path-breaking action-learning programme that has transformed “social compliance” from an esoteric foreign concept into a household word.  by Marianne Scholte

Women playing Ludo at Awaj Foundation Women's Café

Saifullah Khawaja, former Director of the Liaison Office for Worldwide Responsible Accredited Production (WRAP) in Dhaka, Bangladesh, explains how he got involved in social compliance: “In 1992, the Bangladeshi garment factory I was working for made me responsible for compliance. The first thing that happened was we failed an audit conducted by a brand called Tommy Hilfiger. We didn’t know anything about compliance; no one did. When I got the report I started studying things and tried to work it out. Then GAP came and my factory passed. That is how it started.”

Md. Manjur Morshed was one of the people carrying out social compliance audits for major European and US apparel brands. He inspected hundreds of garment factories in Bangladesh, but grew increasingly frustrated with the limitations placed on him as an auditor. As he explains, “Even by the mid-2000s, no one knew what social compliance was. But it was a conflict of interest for me as an auditor to advise the factories. I could not tell them how to improve their violations, never suggest anything, not even training. And in any case, the only social compliance training available was outside the country and it was costly. I wanted to contribute more.”

Shatil Ara worked part-time as a third-party auditor in order to finance her university studies. Like Morshed, she found that most companies had no idea what social compliance was. Two Korean companies for whom she carried out audits asked her to translate their code of conduct and Bangladesh’s labour laws into Bangla and to design a training programme to help companies comply with these. “My training programme was totally bookish,” she admits.

In 2007, Saifullah, Morshed, and Ara were among the people recruited to develop a comprehensive social compliance training programme for the Bangladesh readymade garment (RMG) sector – a programme that is today used throughout the sector by RMG factories, trade associations, NGOs, training institutes, and universities and has played a key role in raising awareness and improving working conditions throughout the sector.  

Two Years After Rana Plaza, Are Bangladesh’s Workers Still at Risk?

Labor standards are improving in this impoverished country, but workers must have a voice if these changes are to be sustainable. by Amy Lee   http://www.thenation.com/article/207841/two-years-after-rana-plaza-are-bangladeshs-workers-still-risk

One of the best articles on the situation in Bangladesh that I have ever read.

Development aid critique: quick results say little about long-term success

Brigitte Erler’s Tödliche Hilfe (Deadly Aid) was published in 1985 and unleashed a furious public and academic discussion in Germany about the value of development assistance. The book was a forerunner of a debate about aid effectiveness that continues unabated today and has led, among other things, to an emphasis on quick, measureable impacts in the design of development projects. However, quick results say little about the ultimate contribution of such projects. Revisiting some of the projects Erler criticized, now, thirty year later, sheds surprising light on the subject. by Marianne Scholte

In 1983, Erler, then a desk officer in the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), returned from a three-week trip to Bangladesh, where she visited projects supported by the ministry. She immediately quit her job and wrote Tödliche Hilfe, in which she maintained that ‘every single component of the projects implemented under my responsibility made the rich richer and the poor, poorer.’

Erler was one of the first to write a scathing bestseller critical of development aid. She would not be the last. In 2009, the Zambian economist, Dambisa Moyo, wrote a book with a title similar to Erler’s: Dead Aid: why aid is not working and how there is another way for Africa. Echoing Erler, Moyo claimed that ‘Millions in Africa are poorer today because of aid; misery and poverty have not ended but increased.’

In the more nuanced, but no less strident The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good (2006), William Easterly, the former World Bank research economist, argued that aid has been, for the most part, a colossal waste of money because planners had been imposing ‘big ideas’ from above instead of searching out what might work in a concrete situation. 

This fundamental skepticism towards aid has contributed to a questionable trend in international development cooperation: Today, development projects are increasingly required to use relatively short-term results-based monitoring and evaluation frameworks such as DFID’s 3Es ‘Value for Money’ or the BMZ’s Results Matrix to prove that their positive impact justifies the use of development funds. Some agencies are even experimenting with a cash-on-delivery framework, whereby development aid is only disbursed if the planned results have actually been achieved. 

Critics in the tradition of Brigitte Erler have done a disservice to development aid, as they have ignored the fact that one needs patience for development and development aid to be successful. In this context, it is instructive to circle back and examine some of the BMZ-supported projects in Bangladesh that so exasperated Erler 30 years ago. 

Study: RMG jobs help lower child marriage rate

The life of a Bangladeshi garment factory worker is not an easy one, but the new research by the University of Washington (UW) suggests something else.
The new study indicates that access to such factory jobs improves the lives of young Bangladeshi women, motivating them to stay in school and lowering their likelihood of early marriage and childbirth.
- See more at: http://www.dhakatribune.com/business/2015/mar/29/study-rmg-jobs-help-lower-child-marriage-rate#sthash.uolNcb3g.g9UtovzG.dpuf

he life of a Bangladeshi garment factory worker is not an easy one, but the new research by the University of Washington (UW) suggests something else.
The new study indicates that access to such factory jobs improves the lives of young Bangladeshi women, motivating them to stay in school and lowering their likelihood of early marriage and childbirth.
- See more at: http://www.dhakatribune.com/business/2015/mar/29/study-rmg-jobs-help-lower-child-marriage-rate#sthash.uolNcb3g.g9UtovzG.dpuf

The life of a Bangladeshi garment factory worker is not an easy one, but the new research by the University of Washington (UW) suggests something else.

The new study indicates that access to such factory jobs improves the lives of young Bangladeshi women, motivating them to stay in school and lowering their likelihood of early marriage and childbirth.

- See more at: http://www.dhakatribune.com/business/2015/mar/29/study-rmg-jobs-help-lower-child-marriage-rate#sthash.uolNcb3g.g9UtovzG.dpuf

The life of a Bangladeshi garment factory worker is not an easy one, but the new research by the University of Washington (UW) suggests something else.
The new study indicates that access to such factory jobs improves the lives of young Bangladeshi women, motivating them to stay in school and lowering their likelihood of early marriage and childbirth.
- See more at: http://www.dhakatribune.com/business/2015/mar/29/study-rmg-jobs-help-lower-child-marriage-rate#sthash.uolNcb3g.g9UtovzG.dpuf

The life of a Bangladeshi garment factory worker is not an easy one, but the new research by the University of Washington (UW) suggests something else.
The new study indicates that access to such factory jobs improves the lives of young Bangladeshi women, motivating them to stay in school and lowering their likelihood of early marriage and childbirth.
- See more at: http://www.dhakatribune.com/business/2015/mar/29/study-rmg-jobs-help-lower-child-marriage-rate#sthash.uolNcb3g.g9UtovzG.dpuf

Bangladesh

No “basket case”
Bangladesh is one of the few countries likely to meet almost all of the Millennium Development Goals. The country is still very poor, but it has made spectacular progress.  by Marianne Scholte

http://www.dandc.eu/en/article/bangladesh-development-success-not-basket-case

 

 

Labour relations

“Enforce the law”

 In the eyes of garment workers, Bangladesh’s textiles industry is better than its international reputation. Nazma Akter, one of the country’s leading labour activists, assessed matters in an interview with Marianne Scholte. 

 

http://www.dandc.eu/en/article/bangladeshi-labour-leader-demands-laws-be-enforced

 

 

The needs of the garment workers should have priority

Syed Sultan Uddin Ahmmed, Assistant Executive Director of the Bangladesh Institute of Labour Studies (BILS Projects), discusses compensation for Rana Plaza victims, factory safety and labor unions in Bangladesh. In his view, while a lot of money is being spent for seminars and consultants, little has actually improved for workers in the factories.              by Marianne Scholte

Dhaka, 24 September 2014

Scholte: A lot has happened since Rana Plaza. What is the situation in the readymade garment sector and for its workers and labor unions now?

Sultan Ahmmed: There have been endless discussions, nationally and internationally, seminars and conferences in New York, in Brussels, Dhaka, everywhere. Enormous resources have been used, but personally, I don’t feel there has been much improvement on the ground.

Scholte: But what about the compensation being paid by the Rana Plaza Claims Administration? What about the factory inspections by the Accord and Alliance, the remediation going on, the new health and safety committees? Over 200 new labor unions have been registered with the government. All this doesn’t constitute progress?

Sultan Ahmmed: To some small degree, yes. But it is not what it should be. Take compensation. Some victims got support from individual donors; some got support from the Prime Minister’s fund, but one year and five months after Rana Plaza, the Rana Plaza Claims Administration has not been able to disburse compensation to the victims. It is terribly late, terribly late.

Scholte: Why has it taken so long?

Sultan Ahmmed: Because of the assessment criteria – they are complicated and took a long time. This is a huge challenge for the committee. And then there is the problem of non-availability of sufficient funds: we have only enough funds to disburse 40% of the calculated amount.

Scholte: But even that 40% has not been disbursed. How much has been disbursed?

Sultan Ahmmed: Only 50,000 taka per person plus 45,000 taka from Primark. So all together 95,000 taka (960 euros) per person has been disbursed. I am a member of the Rana Plaza Claims Administration, so it is also my failure.

Scholte: How long will it take until the compensation is disbursed?