Apparel Online Bangladesh Magazine January Issue 2019 | Page 36

Festival is a word that the industry dreads the most… After
every festival, especially the two Eids, manufacturers have to be
ready with contingency plans to deal with unplanned workers’
absenteeism and job-hopping so as to ensure production is up
and running.
Md. Fazlul Hoque
GSP Facility
Workers’ Turnaround
INDUSTRY DIARY - 2018
A lingering challenge that has been bothering the
industry is that of the GSP facility offered by USA
to Bangladesh, which has been said to be a key
driver behind Bangladesh’s burgeoning apparel
exports to US. Things are no longer the same after
US withdrew the GSP post Rana Plaza disaster. How
has this impacted the industry?
Managing Director, Plummy Fashions Ltd. (PFL)
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Atiqul Islam
Managing Director, Islam Garments Ltd.
well anticipate the loss of workers
after Eid and workaround things
to a certain degree to ensure
there’s no huge impact on
production and orders but yes
there is setback for sure.
I think the GSP denial by USA has created an image crisis
for Bangladesh in the global market rather than financial
loss. The BGMEA and our Government have fulfilled the
US’s requirements in terms of safety and labour issues,
but unfortunately they are still undone. The European
Union has been providing us all kinds of support including
the GSP facility but the US, which is the ultimate global
leader, is not paying any heed to the urge of a poor
country like Bangladesh. I hope the US authority realises
our need soon and takes the matter of reinstating the
GSP facilities into serious consideration.
Khokon Chandra Kundu
Director – Marketing, AKR Group
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two to three per cent. In majority
of the cases, around 97-98 per
cent workers return to duty after
Eid-Ul-Fitr as the next Eid is in a
span of another one month and
continuing work for another one
month ensures them another bonus
plus a month’s salary.
As one would know, being an Islamic
country, we generally celebrate two
Eids: Eid-Ul-Fitr and Eid-Ul-Azha. In
fact both the Eids account for long
holidays of 7-12 days usually. After
the holidays, most of the workers
come back and join work on time.
However, in certain cases, some
workers are delayed by two to three
days and some even by seven to
eight days; in the latter case, the
number of workers does not exceed
However, things turn little different
in case of Eid-Ul-Azha. Every year,
after Eid-Ul-Azha, most of the RMG
factories witness around 10-15 per
cent workers’ migration, and this is
something we have been witnessing
for long. In such cases, factories
have no option but to recruit some
new workers/staff to strengthen
the production team. Due to this,
factories have to face a slowdown of
the production process for 1-15 days,
which becomes little difficult when it
comes to covering up the shipment
time. And this is something which
has become a yearly affair.
36 Apparel Online Bangladesh | January 2019 | www.apparelresources.com
Inamul Haque Khan
Managing Director, Ananta Garments Ltd.
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<<
Every Eid, the workers’ turnaround
is a perennial problem, which
started since the inception of the
industry. Almost every factory suffers
an average 10-15 per cent loss of
workers after Eid and this is a big
challenge for the manufacturers.
However, it has to be noted that
in majority of the cases, workers
move from one factory to another.
So if you look from the industry’s
perspective, there’s no loss so as
to say. Nonetheless, for individual
manufacturing units, it does have
business implications as losing
workers who have been trained and
know the working procedures well
is a setback. But as I said, being a
constant problem, manufacturers can
We are one of the biggest apparel exporters to the US
market, but in true sense, the denial of GSP by the US
had no effect on us since the apparel industry itself is
not a subject of GSP privileges. I would say it’s more of
an image crisis for Bangladesh in the global arena rather
than any kind of financial implications. The decision by
the US plays a significant role in other export products
including the ceramics and leather items but has very
little or no impact on apparel exports to the US as such.
We have been notified that the apparel exports to the
US markets have been declining for last couple of years
but the reason behind the decline is not GSP, rather some
other issue.