M.
Serajul Islam
The
country watched the Nischintpur/Tazreen garments factory tragedy unfold before their
eyes on the small screen at home. The government did some politics after failing
in its arson/conspiracy theory and paying the relatives of the dead financial
grants to try and keep things in control. It declared a day of mourning. There
was a surreal ring to all these efforts. One felt that fairness and justice are
dead in this country, at least for the poor and the unfortunate workers in the
factories whose lives are worth just a
price and that too as meager as the pay they receive . Many TV stations allowed
in their talk show programmes the opportunity to the owners of the garments
factory led by present and past officials of BGMEA to explain the tragedy. Although
they regretted the deaths, the RMG owners used their appearances before the
media to inform the public that the RMG factories are models of compliance
comparable to such factories anywhere and even better and that the owner of
Tazreen should not be held responsible for what was an accident after all!
A
former BGMEA top official explained that the Tazreen was one such model
factory. He told viewers that where compliance required two staircases to be
built in each floor of a factory the size of Tazreen; it had an extra third
staircase. He however failed to tell viewers one gruesome fact about the three
staircases; that it led to the godown in the ground floor and not to the exit! The
workers used the 3 staircases to walk to the godown where the fire started due
to a transformer that burst where there was to be no transformer under
compliance that turned the entire ground floor into an inferno as a result of
the materials in the godown that blocked the exit and roasted them alive. The
stairs also became funnels that took the fire up the stairs like a chimney and
roasted many more workers in the upper floors. There was no way for these
workers to walk out because the “compliance perfect” Tazreen had failed to
build a wall to create a passage from the stairs to the exit.
The
other facts that came out of the tragedy also point to gross negligence on part
of those whose duty it was to ensure the factory was compliant. It was built on
what was once agricultural land. The road constructed to the factory was an
apology of one. It was a major obstruction for the fire service trucks and personnel
from reaching the factory after the fire started and fire fighting department
was called. These are serious flaws in
compliance that BGMEA officials tried to explain off. Then there were of course
the human failings that are of criminal nature. When the fire alarms were
sounded, supervisors of Tazreen threatened workers from walking off from their
work telling them that there was no fire on the premise. The most serious
unexplained part of the human factor of the tragedy was that the workers of
Tazreen were locked inside a steel gate at each floor even after the fire went
out of control! No supervisor cared to unlock the gates leaving workers to
break windows to come out. Those who succeeded lived; those who did not, died.
Western
Ambassadors in Dhaka have been raising their voices about the dangerous conditions
in the garment industry in recent times. The US Ambassador who feels and
rightly so that the industry has great potentials and already the backbone of
Bangladesh’s economy has also expressed
that there are dark clouds in the horizon that must be addressed that the
government and the garment factory owners are sadly side-stepping . In an
article in Wall Street Journal, a lot of the fears of the western Ambassadors
have been reflected while reporting on the Nischintpur tragedy. Appropriately
titled “Why Dhaka Keeps Burning: A case study in how favoritism in one
industry-garments- hurts everyone else” the writer Joseph Sternberg has flagged what
is wrong with the industry. The writer stated that single minded pursuit of the
RMG sector in Bangladesh has led to a
situation where this sector with US$ 19 billion in exports, accounts for 80% of
the country’s exports and 17% of the country’s total economic output. Yet
curiously what no one seems to talk about or write upon is the fact that the
country has no natural advantage in this sector except cheap labour!
Joseph
Sternberg explained that such single minded devotion to one industry that is
otherwise succeeding is understandable. What is neither understandable nor
explainable by economic theory is the fact that after “concerted push into textiles for nearly
three decades, the effort has not led to the sequential flowering of other
industries, as economic theory would predict.” He blamed lack of government’s
vision and over-favoritism to the RMG sector for the failure of the “sequential
flowering of other sectors” like it has happened in all other countries that
started off their economic journey on the back of a single sector though it
must be added that in case of Bangladesh, it continued to favour its one
product based economic success in a sector in which it has no natural
advantage. The writer also blamed a nexus between the
government and the leaders of the RMG sector for the failure of the “sequential
flowering”. Joseph Sternberg felt that low wages and poor working conditions are deliberate, the product of special labour
laws for the RMG sector that ban unionization and regulate pay to keep wages
depressed in the name of competitiveness. The writer concluded that these are
the why “Dhaka keeps burning”.
The
government and the garments owner have been elated in recent times about the
flight of RMG business from China to Bangladesh because of abundance of cheap
labour in Bangladesh against rising labour costs in this sector in China. The
transformation of the Chinese economy no longer requires the country and its
businessmen to pay the sort of emphasis on the garments industry as they did
when like the Bangladesh economy; the garments industry played a major role in
the country’s economy. With labour costs escalating, the Chinese RMG products
have been losing its competitiveness. The government and the business sector
have been seeing this coming. China has diversified its economy and there has
been “sequential flowering of other sectors”. Therefore while the flight of RMG business from
China to Bangladesh has benefitted Bangladesh, Chinese economy has not been affected
by the move because in the diversification that it has achieved, RMG sector is
not a major factor in the Chinese economy anymore.
Therefore
if people in Government and business are seriously thinking of Bangladesh’s economic
future, there is no reason for seeing the flight of RMG business from China to
Bangladesh as a boon for the country unless they take corrective measures with
vision. Bangladesh’s main claim to becoming a leading RMG producing nation is
the cheap labour. This is not going to last; in fact this is too good to last
unless the government and business look upon this issue seriously. The US$ 45 a
month payment the RMG workers receive today at their point of entry is
unbelievable. While acknowledging the
compulsions of the RMG owner about raising wages higher and still remaining
competitive, they should ask whether an industry that pays such low wage can
survive in the long run. Those outside the RMG industry at home and
particularly abroad would refer to such low wages and the other conditions in
which the workers work and live as a case of slave labour.
Bangladesh
entrepreneurs in the RMG sector have done a lot to be proud. They have given
Bangladesh’s economy its biggest boost. Some of these entrepreneurs are extraordinary
leaders of the industry. But the country has over 5000 such factories employing
nearly 3 million workers and has been a basic factor in women empowerment in
the country. If one accounted for the
subsidiary industries such as packaging, etc that have grown because of the
success of the RMG sector, the employment figure would be over 4 million. The
mix of these extraordinary leaders who are by far few and the majority who are
not is unfortunately a very bad one. By any account, Tazreen owners are guilty
of faults for which they must pay under the law of the country. Equally, all
the faults that have come to light about Tazreen are major ones against BGMEA’s
tall claims of compliance. These must be investigated. Not only must the owners
of Tazreen be booked; those whose duty it was to oversee compliance must also
be brought under the purview of the law.
There
are many more Tazreens and despite the claims of the BGMEA, compliance for the
majority of the RMG factories is mainly on paper for a large number of garment
factories. By the count of those who
qualify and extraordinary entrepreneurs in the RMG sector, overwhelming
majority of the 5000 RMG factories are sick industries who survive but barely
and cut the corners that brings the sector bad name. In a corrupt country like
Bangladesh, BGMEA officials should think twice before making the claims that
they have made after the Nischintpur tragedy. In fact, they are the ones who
should be held guilty for misleading the country than the media that they have
accused. They should consider what these sick factories are doing for their
lies the seeds of the destruction of the successful RMG sector of Bangladesh.
Tazreen
should be a watershed on a few major counts. First, it should alert the
government that the wage structure in the sector is unbelievable and cannot be
sustained even in the short run. There are no conspiracy theories in the sector
about which the BGMEA and the government tell us every time there are
disturbances in the sector. These disturbances are legitimate outpouring of the
frustrations of those whose sweat makes few of our compatriots very rich.
Second, the government planners should read the WSJ article and take lessons as
it should from China. The mainly one track pursuit of the RMG sector can only
bring disaster for the future of the country. Diversification is the key and
the country should not gloat that RMG business is fleeing from China to Bangladesh. It may not be business that is
coming to Bangladesh; it could be death and destruction unless we see the
writings on the wall to which the western Ambassadors are pointing and on which
the WSJ and other newspapers are writing.
Bangladesh,
a resource poor country, can achieve the close to 10% growth rate required to
become a middle income country and sustain it primarily through external
assistance in the form of FDI. The poor image
of the country is unfortunately a major obstacle for such a flow of FDI. To the
many factors that have contributed to the poor image of the country abroad,
Nischintpur has added one more. It received breaking news coverage of the TV all over the world where the sad
conditions of workers, their poor wages and the other paraphernalia did not do
Bangladesh’s poor image any good at all. It simply added fuel to the fire. With
the Hatir Jheel project about to be completed shortly, BGMEA’s many storied
building will stand right at the middle of it as a reminder of illegality.
Unfortunately the BGMEA leaders did not add to their credibility in handing the
Nischintpur tragedy as much as Nischintpur did not add to the image of the
country. People would be asking as long as this building stands whether the
leaders of the garments sector can be trusted in leading the economic sector of
the country and whether or not they are taking the country for a ride to which
the government is contributing and assisting.
As
far as the government is concerned, 112 people dead is a very small matter.
That they came from the poor and the disadvantaged section of the society will
help the government forget the tragedy quicker. Further, the ability to correct
the situation may also no longer be easy now because the corrective measures
should have been taken long ago. The RMG sector is moving to the edge of the
precipice. Nevertheless, no one should
be misled by the ironic name of the location of Tazreen; there is no scope of
being unconcerned or “nischinto” anymore. Nischintpur is a wakeup call for the
government and the brilliant entrepreneurs of the RMG sector to work together
and correct the grave ills in the sector to avoid the nightmarish consequences
that are in the offing.
The
writer is a retired Ambassador.
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