The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) has been awarded the ‘WITSA Global ICT Excellence Awards’ in Sustainable Growth/Circular Economy Award category by WITSA for using ‘Biometric Identity and Worker Information Management System’ in 25th WCIT (World Congress on Information Technology).

The award was given at the World Congress on IT (WCIT 2021) in Dhaka on November 13. BGMEA Director Rajiv Chowdhury received the award on behalf of BGMEA

Shahid-Ul-Munir, Vice Chairman, WITSA Asia Pacific handed over this prestigious award to BGMEA. Among other the WITSA Chairman and the Secretary General were connected virtually. 

World Information Technology and Services Alliance (WITSA) is the leading recognized voice of the global digital technology industry, whose members from over 80 countries and economies represent more than 90% of the world’s ICT market. The WITSA Awards recognize the entities that made the most significant contributions to mankind in 2021.

BGMEA took the initiative of preparing a biometric database of garment workers in 2013. The ‘Biometric Identity and Worker Information Management System (Worker Database)’ stores workers’ records, including information related to their employment and identities in the local and cloud server databases.

Currently, this database is being used by about 2500 member factories of BGMEA for more than 4 million workers every day. 

Besides, BGMEA and Brac University (BracU) is collaborating to develop a digital repository of the workers of export-oriented RMG industry. The digital repository can be utilized to design significant interventions and to formulate policies for the workers’ well-being while contributing to Digital Bangladesh Vision 2021. 

BGMEA and BracU also inked an agreement in 2016 to support the collection of credible and comprehensive data about the RMG industry and prepare a publicly accessible interactive online map of the industry under a project ‘Mapped in Bangladesh’ (MiB). The objective of this program is to provide accurate, credible and updated RMG factory information to industry stakeholders in a manner that enhances confidence in the ability of the sector to contribute to equitable development in Bangladesh.