IT was reported recently that a section of lawmakers in the United States are trying to sensitise the US Trade Representative’s Office to take punitive actions against Bangladesh for lacking safety conditions in its garment industry by withdrawing the General System of Preference (GSP) facility it enjoys while exporting garments … to US markets.

Let us hope that the US authorities would be guided more by reasonableness and objective evaluation of conditions in the garment industry following [the] factory fire incident at Ashulia. The Tazreen factory fire appears to have rallied the association of garment industries here to undertake measures on a high-priority basis to achieve 100 per cent compliance in matters of workers’ safety. This is not to say that such activities were mainly absent in the past. …[A] large number of these industries turned fully compliant long before the awful fire incident. Now after it, all the remaining somewhat compliant or less compliant garments industries are being forced to give very focused attention to workers’ safety needs.

Thus, it may be expected that total or near-total compliance … would be a reality in this sector sooner than later.

When the industry’s owners and operators are gearing up to address … safety conditions for workers in a dedicated manner … if the GSP is actually withdrawn, then that would be a most unfortunate and unfair development.

The buyers need to realise that the consequences of such drastic action could mean severely undermining the competitiveness of the garment industry. Many of them could close down throwing their large number of workers into terrible economic hardships. So, a … move taken to show solidarity with workers … would only lead to accentuating the sufferings of … workers in large numbers …

Thus, the best response from buyers should be … to allow the garment operators in Bangladesh to overcome their present deficiencies while maintaining steady pressure to that end. Furthermore … the buyers if they really care … should be prepared to pay a little extra to our garment producers, linking the same to a plan to spend the additional resources … on improvement of safety conditions for workers.—(Feb 26)