Securing 20,000Garment Workers in Bangladesh
Submitted to
Global Giving Foundation
Submitted by
Shobujer Ovijan Foundation (SOF)
House #822, Road # 5
Baitul Aman Housing society Adabor , Dhaka 1207
Email:
Website:
Table of contents
Project summary sheet
Executive Summary
1Background and rationale
2Project Goal
3Project Purpose
4Project Outputs
5Major Activities
6Geographic locations
7Target beneficiary and stakeholders
8Staff management
9Supervision and monitoring
10Evaluation
11Exit plan
12Risks
13Resources
Annex 1: Logical Framework
Annex 2: Implementation plan
Annex 3: Job specification of the project personnel
Annex 4: Detail Budget of the project
Annex 5: List of garments factories to be included in this project
Section I:
Project summary sheet
Title of the Project:Securing 20000Garment Workers in Bangladesh
Name of the Organization:Shobujer Ovijan Foundation (SOF)
Name andaddress of: Ms. Mahmuda Begum
the contact person Executive Director
House #822, Road # 5
Adabar, Dhaka-1207
Duration of the project : Two (2) years
Project cost:
- Total cost of the project: USD 65946
Section II:
Executive Summary
Garment industry is the largest formal sector employer of women in Bangladesh. It employs more than four million, 80% of them are women. This sector is the symbol of economic self reliance and empowerment of women though their rights and entitlements are regularly challenged. There have been some improvements in employment condition especially in the areas of child employment and minimum wage. However, safety and occupational health remains big concern for the whole sector. Lack of awareness among the workers coupled with insincerity of the management make the whole sector unsafe for the employees. Fire, building collapse and stampede has taken away many innocent lives, mostly women who came to work for a better life. Small scale accidents are rampant. Unhygienic and filthy work environment causes huge impact on the worker’s health and productivity. Occupational health and safety issue has risk 4 million worker in the garment sector.
SOF is working with the garment sector on social compliance issues. Under a project support from Aga Khan Foundation (AKF), SOF is working with 30 garment factories in Dhaka, Gazipur and Narayangonj to establish and operate childcare facilities within factory premise. These centers provide day care and early childhood education to the children of garment workers. SOF wants to leverage its exiting working relation with these 30 garment factories to promote occupational health practices and work place safety to around 30,000 workers; 80% of them are women. Management of these garment factories will directly participated in this project. Other stakeholders include BGMEA, BKMEA, and International buyers and regulatory authorizes.
The goal of the project is to improve rights and empowerment of garment workers. The proposed project will contribute to improve working condition and legal compliance in the garment factory. The purpose of the project is to improve safety and occupational health practices at the garments factories. Worker’s safety issues are expected to be addressed by the management through appropriate structural and institutional measures. On the hand, worker will uphold proper safety practices and behavior at workplace. The project will deliver as many as three results to accomplish the project purpose. These outputs are:
Output 1: Improved safety arrangements and management systems are put in place in factories
Output 2: Improved occupational and safety knowledge and awareness among workers
Output 3: Safety issue is turned as “business as usual”
Major activities of the project will include
- Factory wise safety and occupational health assessment and action planning
- Advocacy with the factory management, industry association, regulatory authorities and international buyers
- Capacity building of factory management staff on safety and occupational health
- Awareness development campaigned using interactive communication materials
- Training to line supervisors
- Institutionalize safety and occupational health practices
This is a two year project which will cost Tk.(approx). 81% of the budget will be used directly to implement the project. The rest 19% will be used to meet the project related administrative expenditure.
Section III
1Background and rationale
Bangladesh boasts the second largest export oriented garment industry in the world only after China. This industry is growing at a rapid paceover the last few years due to low cost of production. It is envisaged that the garment industry will to continue to grow at an accelerated pace in the coming years as Bangladesh now becomes the most competitive garment supplier to the world market. This sector becomes the largest formal employer of women. Currently more than 3 million women work in the sector. This sector is also seen as the driver of women empowerment in the country which has ripple effect on the entire society.
The above is the bright and prosperous side of the coin. There is also a less illustrious and dummy side of the sector which often capture the headlines in the newspaper. The sector is marred with industrial accidents, workplace safety issues and above all inappropriate working condition particularly for the women.
This sector has grown with private capital primarily with profit motive. The sector has grown outpacing the regulatory capacity of the government. Therefore, industrial law and other regulatory measures are highly compromised in the garment industry. Ramifications of these are exhibited through frequent unrest in the industry over salary and bonus payment, accident, industrial dispute and so on. In order to govern this sector, there are four major regulatory compliance issues that become binding for the industry management. They are:
Workers rights and benefits (Salary, bonus, leave, service rules etc)
Safety and occupational health
Health care for the worker (Check up and primary healthcare)
Day care for the workers children
There have been issues in all the four category of compliance requirements. However, safety and occupation health issues are mostly neglected as this has a less direct effect on the day to day life but this can have life threatening effect. Illiterate and migrated workers employed in garment factories have no knowledge of occupational health risks. In most garment factories, there is absolutely no provision for occupational health awareness programme for the factory workers. Safety related laws are poor maintained mostly for cost saving motive, management insincerity and poor monitoring by the government agencies. Tazreen garment fire, Rana Plaza disaster cost hundreds of lives due to poor safety measures. Small scale industrial accidents (stitching, thread cutting, burnt during ironing, dust inhalation, intoxication etc.) are rampant at the factories. The whole industry is now in jeopardy. Government, industry bodies and international buyers are off late serious to bring this industry in order towards sustainable growth.
This has given an opportunity for SoFwhich is currently working with 20 garment industries on compliance issue, specifically to establish and promote factory- based day care and early childhood education (ECD). Around 20,000 garment workers are working at these factories; nearly 80% of them are women. SoF wants to leverage on its current project to address occupational health and safety issues. Garment management are supportive to this project ides as this project will enhance their social compliance indicators of their industry and thereby business competitiveness.
SOF will renew agreement with the factory management to extend occupational health services to its existing service packages.The new project will provide the scope and opportunity to scale up safety and occupation health awareness to the entire factory workers.ECD project has already trained some management staff. They will be involved in the implementation of the proposed project.
2Project Goal
Rights and empowerment of garment workers improved
Around 4 million men and women are currently working in the garment sector; 70% of them are women. Their rights and working conditions are long been compromised. The project is designed to address the pressing issues related to fundamental rights and entitlements of the garment workers in Bangladesh. The project envisages contributing to the:
- Improvement of with working condition at the garments factories
- Improve regulatory and social compliance in the sector
3Project Purpose
Safety and occupational health standards at the selected 20 garments factories improved
Safety and occupational health are major challenges at garment factories. There has been lack of awareness and sincerity for safety and occupation health risks both among the management as well as factory workers. Safety issues are highly compromised and neglected in Bangladesh in general but more specifically in the garment sector. Frequent industrial accidents, most of them are preventable, have been occurring in the garment sector. To address these problems, the proposed project will adopt two strategic aspects. They are:
- Preventive meaning that the project will strive to enhance infrastructural and management systems at the factories so that the occurrence of accidents and occupation health risks can be minimized; and
- Curative meaning that the project will equip management staff and workers with enhanced knowledge and awareness so that in case of workplace accidents, workers can management the situation with minimum impact.
A total of 20 garment factories will be included in this project. However, the project will work for two years will a particular factory. Anticipated results of this two year project are:
- Occupational and safety compliance score enhanced by 30% from the benchmark score
- 80% workers follow standard occupational health practices
This project is envisaged developing a new low cost model for improving occupational health and safety particularly for the women workers at the garment factories. Adequate attention will be given throughout the project cycle to identify and document lessons learned and adopt in the project planning. It is expected that the outcome of this project would be a feasible and sustainable model that can be replicated and expanded rapidly to make an impact at the sectoral level.
4Project Outputs
The project will work with 20 garment factories over two years. However, each factory will be involved with the project for a maximum of 12 months. Therefore, the project will begin with 10 factories which will be increased to 10 in the beginning of second year. The project will deliver three independent results which are described below:
Output 1: Improved safety arrangements and management systems are put in place in factories
The project envisaged mobilizing factory management and staff to improve safety procedures at the factory through awareness, advocacy, training, and follow up processes. It is expected the management will make additional investment and employ additional human resources (if necessary) to enhance safety system within the factory premises. The project will ensure following results
- At least 15 factory have standard electric, fire and otherstandard safety systems in place
- At least 100management and supervisory staff are trained and involved in safety management
Output 2: Improved occupational and safety knowledge and awareness among workers
Well informed and aware workforce is a key to ensure workplace safety and good occupation health practice at the factory level. Therefore, the project envisaged educating the entire work force at the garment industry on key safety aspects including occupational health practices. The project will train the supervisors who in turn will pass on the information to the workers. Besides, the project will undertake period communication campaign to ensure that critical information is passed and retained by the workers. Therefore, the followed results are expected
- At least 400line supervisors are trained on occupational cum workplace safety procedures who in turn would pass on(following cascade model of training) the information to nearly 20,000 workers
- Most workers are aware of occupational health practices and demonstrate readiness
- Occupational health is included in staff induction training
Output 3: Safety issue is turned as “business as usual”.
This output is related to institutionalization of safety and occupational health practices, hence linked with the exit strategy. The project plans to establish safety and occupational health issues as daily matters and thus integrated in the regular operating systems.
Safety inspections and instrument updating and replacement processes become retinue function
- Safety drills are conducted with regular intervals
- Safety issues are regularly discussed at worker-management “Participation Committee” meetings.
5Major Activities
1.1 Renew SOF ToR with the factories
SOF will renew the exiting ToR with 20 garment factories where the project will be implemented. This ToR will include the project objective, activity plan, expected results as well as commitments and responsibilities of respective parties. Managing Director of the garment factory and SOF Executive Director will sign the ToR.
1.2 Conduct benchmark safety and occupational compliance assessment
SOF will conduct an “Occupational and Safety Compliance” assessment individually for each and every garment factory under this project. An industry standard compliance assessment checklist will be used. Two such assessments will be conducted at every factory, one at the beginning of the project which will be called as “benchmark assessment” and another at the end of two year which will be called as “Performance assessment”. Assessment tool and process with be shared with the management and the process will be implemented in an open and transparent environment.
1.3 Prepare time-bound plan with factory management
A meeting will be organized to share benchmark assessment results with the factory management. The meeting will discuss and analyze relevant safety and occupational health aspects of the factory. A time bound and results oriented action plan will be prepared in this meeting. Each factory will have specific and time bound action plan.
1.4 Training of relevant management staff
The implementation of the safety and occupational improvement plan will begin with the training of senior level management staff. The project will provide training to at least 5 management staff from each factory on “Safety and occupational health”. Resource person from Fire service and Civil defense will conduct this training. Refresher training will be organized for these participants in the following year to reinforce their commitment.
1.5 Advocacy meetings with stakeholders
The project will undertake advocacy initiatives with relevant stakeholders including regulatory authorities, international buyers and garment associations (BGMEA, BKMEA). The main purpose of these advocacy meetings will be to maintain pressure on the factory management towards work plan implementation. The project will also promote high performing factories to the international buyer which may enhance their business prospects.
1.6 Follow up with management staff against safety plans
Project officers will meet with the factory management on a quarterly basis to follow up on the action plan. Progress, challenges as well as remedial actions will be discussed in this meeting.
2.1 Prepare interactive training materials
The project will conduct awareness raising training and campaign for mass awareness among the workers. These training and campaign will use interactive communication materials such as posters, visual materials and pictures. Besides, the project will print leaflets, stickers and other communication materials for mass awareness campaign.
2.2 Provide ToT to Line Supervisors
The project will provide one day short training the factory line managers who supervise the floor workers. They will be provided with ToT so they can cascade the training massage to the factory workers. These supervisors will disseminate the training massages to the workers during breaks. Besides, they will guide workers in factory floor during work.
2.3 Conduct awareness raising campaign
The project will conduct mass awareness raising campaign using various materials. During these campaigns, communication materials will be demonstrated in the factory. Special discussion meeting will also be held at the factory premises. At four half yearly mass awareness campaign will be held in each factory.
3.1 Conduct monthly follow up
Project staff will conduct monthly visit to the factory to factory. During the follow up visit, project staff will observe safety issues using pre-design checklist and discuss the management staff. They will also observe worker’s safety behavior at the factory floor.
3.2 Provide orientation to participation committee
The project will provide one day orientation to the “Participation Committee Members” consist of management and worker representative. The objective of the orientation is to make sure that safety and occupational health issue as regularly discussed in the committee meeting.