Emerging Concerns of Occupational Safety and Health of the RMG Industry: Role of Public and Private Monitoring Agencies

Bangladesh’s readymade garments (RMG) industry has made significant improvements in Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) over the last decade, especially in the years after the Rana Plaza tragedy. Despite the progress, a number of emerging concerns on industrial safety in the RMG industry raised the concern regarding the sustainability of different legal, institutional and operational measures and initiatives undertaken in the industry over the years. Hence, reviewing the existing institutional and operational functionality of different initiatives and measures to appreciate their capacity to ensure OSH and industrial safety has become imperative.

Against this backdrop, the civil society monitoring initiative called ‘Civil Society Monitoring on Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) in Bangladesh’s RMG Sector’ has been launched by Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD). This initiative is similar to what had been undertaken by civil society organisations to monitor the progress of industrial safety after the Rana Plaza tragedy in 2013. As part of the ongoing initiative, monitoring briefs called ‘RMG Monitoring Brief’ will be published with updates on the state of compliance with OSH and industrial safety in the RMG industry. This is the first brief in this series.

Authors: Dr Khondaker Golam Moazzem and Tamim Ahmed
Publication period: April 2023