Alongside developing its capacities to retain competiveness in the changing business landscape, the RMG industry of Bangladesh is also committed to sustaining the progress made so far in the area of workplace safety, said Faruque Hassan, President of BGMEA.

“Learnings lessons from the past the garment industry of Bangladesh has made unprecedented progress particularly in the area of workplace safety while we have also made exemplary stride in environmental sustainability in line with the demand of time and trends,” he said.

Bangladesh RMG industry is committed to continue its pursuance of more excellence, he said.

Faruque Hassan made the remarks while addressing a seminar organized by Particip GmbH on behalf of GIZ at Hotel Amari Dhaka on March 30 to brief BGMEA and BKMEA participating member factories on the Communication Component of the STILE project.

Owners and senior management representatives from participating member factories were present in the event.

The Communication Component of STILE intends to contribute to improved compliance with social and environmental standards with its awareness raising, information and education campaigns as well as with its Women Café’s and Factory Committee’s centric capacity development measures. The project developed a pool of trainers from the three industry associations (BGMEA, BKMEA and LFMEAB) to build capacity of factory committees in their member factories and will continue the intervention until November 2023. 

The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) is implementing the program “Sustainability in the Textile and Leather Sector in Bangladesh” (STILE). Output 4 of STILE, generally referred to as the Communication Component, is implemented by a tripartite consortium of Particip GmbH (lead), RedOrange Media and Communications and Centre of Excellence for Leather Skill Bangladesh Limited (COEL) awarded by GIZ GmbH. 

The seminar was moderated by Sarwat Ahmad, Senior Advisor, GIZ. Former Director of BGMEA ANM Saifuddin also spoke at the event.

Anneke Magendans, Team Leader of the Particip GmbH led tripartite consortium, said “Our approach does not stop with solely conducting training. The association trainers follow up by providing guidance to the factory committees and support them to bring into practice what they have learnt. Furthermore, the approach is fully transparent. Producers have access, via a QR code, to a website where they can find all related campaign and training materials.”

Werner Lange, Cluster Coordinator of the GIZ Bangladesh Textile Cluster, said he is confident that Bangladesh is on its way to a similar achievement ‘from victim to victory’ with ‘Made in Bangladesh’.