Garment industry has to change for the better: Mozena

The US Ambassador in Dhaka has once again said the Savar building collapse and the Tazreen Fashions fire were the results of ‘greed, corruption and ignorance’ and that “there can be no return to business as usual”.

Citing a recent meeting with a ‘powerful’ US congress leader, Dan Mozena on Monday said, “America will not buy shirts stained with the blood of Bangladeshi workers.”

He was speaking at the Dhaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry while inaugurating a ‘Help Desk’ and unveiling of the ‘US Products and Services Info Center’.

The Chamber’s President Md Sabur Khan, and apex business body FBCCI President Kazi Akram Uddin Ahmed were also present, among others.

The Ambassador in his speech recalled the worst-ever building collapse and the Tazreen fire and said his meeting with the US Congress leader was ‘shortest’ in his career but the message was ‘clear and powerful’.

“There simply cannot be any more such horrid disasters,” he said as he urged all to work together to ensure that “the horrors of Tazreens Fashions and Rana Plaza are never repeated”.

“The time has come to transform the apparel sector of Bangladesh,” Mozena said listing steps that the major buyers European Union and the US had taken after the incidents.

He said when President Barack Obama announced his decision to suspend Bangladesh’s GSP privileges, “he provided an action plan, a road map for reinstating these privileges”.

“The GSP Action Plan, much like the Sustainability Compact, charts a course of concrete actions to help Bangladesh prevent any future disastrous fires and building collapses,” he said suggesting all to adhere to the action plan.

The Compact, launched by the European Union together with the Government of Bangladesh this past July and joined by International Labour Organization, aims to improve labour rights, working conditions and factory safety in the ready-made garment industry.

The American envoy believed that these disasters would in fact bring about fundamental transformation of Bangladesh’s apparel sector. “Bangladesh’s apparel sector can and has transformed itself … just look at the record.

“When last I lived in Bangladesh a dozen years ago, I worked on serious issues in the apparel sector such as child labor, padlocked exits, denied worker access to toilets, and unpaid overtime.

“Those problems now are largely, if not completely, eliminated, because that is what had to be done to preserve markets in America and Europe, to sustain and grow the apparel sector, which is to the benefit of us all.

“Recognition of these realities led to rapid transformation of the sector on those fronts,” Mozena said and added that the apparel sector was “at a similar crossroads today”.