The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) has urged 553 garment factories to hurry up in remediation work to avoid the risk of termination of business relations with international buyers. These factories were warned of discontinuing of business relations by Accord, the European brands and buyers’ platform conducting activities, for ensuring workplace safety in the garments industries in Bangladesh for their failure of co-operating with its remediation programs and also for slow progress in remediation works and those factories are faced Stage 1 and 2 notifications by the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh.

BGMEA has already started sending letters to default factories and urged them to speed up remediation process to avoid business termination with the European buyers. It may be recalled that Accord had earlier warned 553 readymade garment factories of termination of business relations for their failure to make expected progress in remediation of their factory buildings. The European buyer’s body had also issued ‘non-compliance notifications’ (called stage-1 of escalation protocol) to 449 RMG factories due to inadequate cooperation in finalising Corrective Action Plans, executing remediation and refusal to meet the requirements of the platform. According to the terms of conditions of Accord, this is the primary warning for business termination, sources said.

Accord has so far cut business relations with 37 suppliers due to their failure in making required progress in remediation. Over 1,600 factories have so far been inspected as the European buyers want to make safe factories from where they procure products. Alliance the platform for North American apparel buyers that has so far inspected around 700 factories. And after inspection, it has terminated business relations with a total of 96 local garment factories for their failure to cope with the compliance issues.