Govt to prepare inspection checklist for all factories

The government has prepared a draft checklist for inspecting all of the industrial sectors in the country with the aim of developing an effective inspection system in line with the labour act.
There are 42 industrial sectors in Bangladesh but only the factories in the readymade garment sector have been inspected following a specific checklist since 2012 set by the Social Compliance Forum under the commerce ministry but the other sectors lack effective safety inspections due to an absence of specific checklist, labour ministry officials said.
For the proper implementation of labour act in all industrial sectors the draft checklist has been prepared with the support of the International Labour Organisation, said officials involved with the process.
‘With the aim of implementing labour law properly and developing an effective inspection system in all the country’s industrial sectors, we have prepared a draft checklist and now the draft will be sent to the stakeholders for their comments,’ Syed Ahmed, inspector general of the Department of Inspection for Factories and Establishments, told New Age on Monday.
The safety issues in other sectors were more or less overlooked as the government was busy with the safety issues in the RMG sector due to two major industrial accidents in the sector, he said.
The draft checklist covers most of the rules and regulations under the labour act and will include sector-wise annexure and gender sensitive information, Syed said.
He said despite the absence of sector-wise checklist the safety inspections in other sectors were being carried out in a very small scale following the RMG sector standard.
According to the DIFE statistics, there are a total of 23,218 registered factories across the country and of which RMG factories are 5,002.
Citing a report of the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, the DIFE said on its web site that the total number of economic units was 80.75 lakh in the country.
In a recent report, the DIFE said that the department maintained a list of registered factories and establishments.
The DIFE chief said that all the economic units should have come under government registration and the new checklist would cover all the establishments.
‘We have arranged a fund to organise at least two workshops for the stakeholders on the checklist and I hope all the sectors would accept the government move,’ Syed said.
He thought that there should be a national checklist for the industrial sector of the country as the government was working on formulating a national inspection policy.

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