RMG: A closer look at the reports

Back in 2011, McKinsey & Company conducted a survey among leading apparel buyers in Europe and the US regarding their sourcing strategies. Respondents indicated that due to rising costs in China, Bangladesh was targeted as the next likely sourcing destination.
Recent news depicts McKinsey & Company’s analysis where it still places Bangladesh at the top of the list of the sourcing countries expected to grow in the next five years. The report is based on a survey which was done in the summer of 2013. It was conducted with 29 chief purchasing officers (CPOs) in Europe and the US who are responsible for an annual outsourcing of US$ 39 billion.
The recent survey has been done after the Rana Plaza tragedy in April 2013; so does this mean that this enormous tragedy had no effect on the respondents since Bangladesh still remains at the top of the list of sourcing countries?
Let us quickly take a look at the numbers: after the Rana Plaza tragedy, RMG exports for the month of May was $2 billion. In July 2013, this increased to $2.5 billion. However, August and September registered lower numbers of $1.66 billion and $2.04 billion respectively. This is still higher than the numbers in 2012, as RMG exports were $1.56 billion and $1.44 billion for August and September of 2012 respectively.
However the Rana Plaza effect can be seen when we take a closer look at the McKinsey reports. In the 2011 survey, over 80 percent of the respondents ranked Bangladesh within the top 3 hotspots over the next five years. However the 2013 report shows that this has declined to 52 percent.
As far as new destinations for RMG is concerned, the respondents have implied that there are no solid alternatives in sight. The survey however indicates that CPOs are looking toward Sub-Saharan Africa and Asian locations such as Cambodia, Vietnam and Myanmar. In order for a destination to be promising, it has to be able to take on large volumes, deliver against expectations and provide the long-term investments necessary to secure success.
Even though things may appear to be going well for the RMG industry in Bangladesh, it should be remembered that disasters do take a toll and have an effect on the buyers. If disasters continue to taint the image of the RMG industry of Bangladesh, then it will not be able to reach its full potential.

War crimes, 1971 memories and justice

A couple of days ago, I experienced, in the middle of the night, a very scary bout of cholera like diarrhea. In between my very frequent visits to the bathroom, I slipped in and out of sleep and in my dreams, rather nightmares; I remembered the hundreds of Bangladeshis I saw dying of cholera in the refugee camps in India in 1971. I remembered vividly the mass graves I helped dig. In my dreams, I imagined myself in a hospital bed and the doctor telling me that there was no saline with which to treat me. I told him that in 1971 I saw coconut water being used instead of saline and lives had been saved in that way.
As I was recovering from my stomach upset, I picked up a recent issue of The Daily Star and came across Mahfuz Anam’s powerful writing of October 4, ‘War crimes trial and failure of our politics’. For someone who witnessed the birth of Bangladesh, it is painful and difficult to understand that many Bangladeshis do not support the war crimes trials. Surely justice must be done! There are also those who deny that any genocide took place. Whenever, someone tells me this or I read this, I become very angry indeed and also incredulous. I remember families of Bangladeshis — Hindus and Muslims — coming in a traumatised state across the border to access some of the over 900 refugee camps. Men, women and children of all ages, struck dumb by the horror of seeing some of their loved ones murdered before they managed to escape. I remember being in a hospital in Krishnanagar, West Bengal, in June 1971 at the same time as an international reporter from, I believe, Newsweek. I remember this young girl in a colourful dress and this is how the reporter recorded our meeting with this girl who was about 10 years old:
The story of one shy little girl in a torn pink dress with red and green bows has a peculiar horror. She could not have been a danger to anyone. Yet I met her in a hospital in Krishnanagar, hanging nervously back among the other patients, her hand covering the livid scar on her neck where a Pakistani soldier had cut her throat with his bayonet. “I am Ismatar, the daughter of the late Ishaque Ali,” she said formally. “My father was a businessman in Kushtia. About two months ago he left our house and went to his shop and I never saw him again. That same night after I went to bed, I heard shouts and screaming, and when I went to see what was happening, the Punjabi soldiers were there. My four sisters were lying dead on the floor, and I saw that they had killed my mother. While I was there they shot my brother — he was a bachelor of science. Then a soldier saw me and stabbed me with his knife. I fell to the floor and played dead. When the soldiers left I ran and a man picked me up on his bicycle and I was brought here.” Suddenly, as if she could no longer bear to think about her ordeal, the girl left the room. The hospital doctor was explaining to me that she was brought to the hospital literally soaked in her own blood, when she pushed her way back through the patients and stood directly in front of me. “What am I to do?” she asked. “Once I had five sisters and a brother and a father and mother. Now I have no family. I am an orphan. Where can I go? What will happen to me?
Perhaps it is necessary to remind people about what happened in 1971 and for the members of the younger generation it is important to accurately inform them of the genocide unleashed by the Pakistani army and their collaborators. Because of ‘Operation Searchlight’, 10 million refugees came to India, most of them living in appalling conditions in the refugee camps. I cannot forget seeing 10 children fight for one chapatti. I cannot forget the child queuing for milk, vomiting, collapsing and dying of cholera. I cannot forget the woman lying in the mud, groaning and giving birth.
However, I do remember some happier moments. I remember Muslim families making sweets for the Hindus in the refugee camps for Durga Puja in 1971 and the Hindus reciprocating at Eid ul Fitr. Eid ul Adha occurred in February 1972 and I recall local Hindu shopkeepers in Bongaon handing out sweets to Muslim families who were returning to their Bangladesh homes at that time. The message was loud and clear. “We are not either Hindus or Muslims. We are Bangladeshis and Bengalis!”
In 1971, the population of Bangladesh was about 75 million. 10 million came to India as refugees and it is estimated that about a further 20 million were internally displaced inside Bangladesh. Therefore, as Mahfuz Anam indicates, it is likely that, today, you would find that most families lost family members or suffered in some way during the Liberation War. It follows, therefore, that the majority of the population should be in support of the war crimes trials. In any case, what ever happens, it is important that the history of Bangladesh is recorded correctly.
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The writer coordinated Oxfam’s refugee relief programme in 1971 for 600,000 Bangladesh refugees, continues to live and work in Bangladesh and was, in March 1972, awarded the ‘Friends of Liberation War Honour’ by the Government of Bangladesh.

7.5 kilometres complete

That’s the lead news of the October 14 edition of The Financial Express. The Chinese contractor in charge of the four-lane highway from Dhaka to Chittagong has managed to construct 7.5km out of 140km over the last 20 months. The fact that the company has been experiencing financial difficulty seems to have eluded Roads and Highways Department officials during this period. It is interesting to say the least. Needless to say, the expansion of this crucial highway is of immense importance to the economy.
The total length of the highway stands at 192km with majority portion of work awarded to Sino Hydro. Going by what has been published in the press, the other two local companies appear to be on track with their portion of work on the highway. Sino Hydro was given three years from January 2011 to complete their work but already the firm has sought an extension up to March 2015 to complete the project. Precisely how a 15-month extension will allow the project to be completed when three years had elapsed and work completion rate stands at slightly above 5 per cent is of course, open to speculation.
What is apparent is that precious time was lost because the government wasted valuable time for land acquisition — an essential prerequisite to any such expansion work. We are told that the company has completed about 85 per cent work on earthwork, but the project is in limbo due to the company’s financial constraints. However, the land acquisition delay has taken its toll on the satisfactory progress of the overall project. We can also surmise that not only the difficulties faced in land acquisition, but also timely placement of funds from Bangladesh side for land acquisition has played its part in the delay.
Indeed the 4-lane expansion of the Dhaka-Chittagong highway is part of a much bigger picture. As pointed out in a report published by The Financial Express on February 27 “The South Asia Sub-regional Economic Cooperation (SASEC) under its Road Connectivity Project identified Bangladesh’s geographical location and importance for the N4 four-lane highway regarding regional connectivity between Bangladesh and India-Nepal-Bhutan-SW Kunming of China. The N4 highway is an important part of the Asian Highway 2 and also of Sub-regional Highway Corridor 4 and 8…The proposed Joydevpur-Chandra-Tangail-Elenga 4-lane project (existing 2-lane) which started from the Jamuna Bridge approach road will be connected with the Dhaka-Chittagong 4-lane highway at the Kanchpur Bridge point.”
Given this backdrop, it remains unclear how the government failed to prioritise work on the Dhaka-Chittagong highway. It is actually not too difficult to imagine why work on the highway got derailed. This is, after all, “election year”. And as tradition has it, in every election year, tons of “political” projects get priority. While such projects are certainly very visible and considered vote-winners, the fact that they get priority over nationally-important projects is a failure of planning at the national stage. Again, as per newspaper reports, news of exerting undue pressure on the Planning Commission surfaced in August that an unsanctioned project that proposed construction of a railway line overpass in Comilla was being pursued that would cost the national exchequer an estimated Tk510million. Similarly, another railway construction project in Brahmanbaria was proposed at a cost of Tk740million.
At the end of the day, what all this boils down to is that while the government was facing serious difficulty in meeting funding for the Tk31.29billion, parliamentarians were busy trying to convince the Planning Commission, Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Communications to make financial allocation and other resources available for projects that had less merit in the Annual Development Plan. But then, this is election year. And we come back full circle to realities on the ground which means that the electorate must be convinced that their respective lawmakers have done their bit for the old country. In the midst of all this lobbying, the government is beset with the problems of financing projects that are part of the plan, which include amongst others the Dhaka-Chittagong 4-lane road construction. In the meantime, the allotted time of three years has passed and we are hoping that the work will now be completed within the stipulated extension time, i.e. March 2015. We are uncertain about the certainty of the project being completed within the extended timeframe primarily because of one reason.
Our past experience tells us that should there be a change in the government, development projects initiated by the preceding government come to an abrupt halt (for any multitude of reasons) for months, even years. This culture of halting vital infrastructure development projects has been a common practice of both parties that have led the country since democracy was restored in 1991. And it has been a disastrous policy. One can only hope that a repetition of mistakes committed in the past will not be committed in the future. In the event that this project is derailed, then the whole question of Bangladesh’s participation in the “Asian Highway” plan will be set back, perhaps permanently.

Need for veterinary service at cattle markets

Eid-ul-Azha, one of the biggest religious festivals of the Muslim community, is around the corner. People are busy purchasing their sacrificial animals. But it is a matter of regret that many heads of cattle, especially Indian ones, are infected with different sorts of diseases like anthrax. People are purchasing these infected cattle without any examination because there are no veterinary officials to check these animals at the local market. So the government should deploy sufficient number of veterinarians in the local markets on an emergency basis. If necessary, a little amount of money can be charged for checking the cattle as life is more valuable than money.

Booths at cattle markets to detect fake notes

To check transaction of fake currency notes ahead of Eid-ul-Azha, the authorities of Bangladesh Bank (BB) Rangpur office have set up about 250 booths equipped with fake note detectors to bring 193 cattle markets in eight northern districts.
Branches of other government and private-owned banks in the area are cooperating with the initiative while police and Rapid Action Battalion members have been deployed near the cattle markets, BB sources said.
Mobile courts are also in action.
However, prevalence of fake currency notes remains a matter of concern for common people, as offenders are hardly punished and return to the same illegal business after getting freed form jail.
As many as 226 cases on charge of making and transacting fake currency notes are now pending with courts of eight northern districts, said sources at BB Rangpur office.
Sixty-six of the cases are in Rangpur, 53 in Dinajpur, 36 in Kurigram, 28 in Lalmonirhat, 24 in Thakurgaon, 12 in Nilphamari, five in Panchagarh and two in Gaibandha district.
Some of the cases were filed seven or eight years ago, BB sources said.
In most of the cases, witnesses show unwillingness to give deposition in fear of harassment by powerful fake currency syndicates, said Akhkhoy Kumar Roy, public prosecutor of Nilphamari court.
In many cases, criminals manage to get free from police stations by adopting various unfair means, he said.
Several investigation officers of police probing cases involving fake currency notes alleged that defence lawyers often cause long delay in case proceedings by submitting petitions for time one after another and it deters witnesses from coming to the court for giving deposition.
“Under the existing laws, it is very difficult to ensure punishment to criminals involved in preparation and dealing with fake currency as many such cases are pending for even 8-10 years,” said Aminul Islam Akond, joint manager (Banking) of Bangladesh Bank, Rangpur, also in charge of the currency and claim section of the branch.
Bangladesh Bank submitted a set of recommendations to law ministry last year suggesting amendment of Section 6 of Speedy Trial Tribunal Act of 2002 for bringing such cases under the tribunal to ensure punishment of the offenders at the shortest possible time, he said.

Syndicate illegally sending migrant workers to Libya

Although there is limited scope for work in Libya at present, an unscrupulous and organised syndicate is illegally sending Bangladeshis to the war-torn country with allures of lucrative jobs, says a report of the Bangladesh embassy in Tripoli.
Submitted at a labour attaché conference in Dhaka last month, the report requested the government to identify and take stern action against the syndicate.
“The Libyan labour market is now volatile and the foreign traders are reluctant to run their business here,” one of the embassy officials, requesting anonymity, told The Daily Star recently.
“But a large number of Bangladeshis enter here illegally every month,” he said.
A large portion of the 45,000 Bangladeshis currently working in Libya entered illegally with assistance of the syndicate. Some entered through Egypt and Sudan while others went further to Italy, said the report.
This was possible as the syndicate comprises dishonest officials of the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET) and of the immigration department at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport, it said.
The syndicate charges each person Tk 2.5 lakh to 3 lakh, it mentioned.
The limited scope for work resulted from political and economic instabilities and the interim government of Libya already warned the embassy about the workers illegally entering the country, it said.
“If the Bangladesh government fails to contain the illegal manpower exporters, the working Bangladeshis may face a tougher situation both in Libya and Italy,” it added.
Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment Ministry Secretary Zafar Ahmed Khan told The Daily Star recently that they had taken “some action” against fraud manpower exporting agencies.
“We asked the immigration officials to be more careful so that none can go using fake visas,” he said.
As per the immigration officials, around 100 to 150 Bangladeshis are held every month with fake passports and visas during immigration checks.
“A group of brokers at the BMET office and at the airport help these workers manage passports and visas and avoid immigration checks,” said one of the officials.
Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies Secretary General Ali Haider Chowdhury told The Daily Star recently that the government should take action against any registeredZ recruiting agency found involved.
Before the civil war in Libya in 2011, there were around 60,000 Bangladeshi workers. During the war, 38,000 returned and around 16,000 fled to neighbouring Middle Eastern countries while the rest stayed back, states the report.

All garment workers have been paid, BGMEA says

Garment makers yesterday claimed that almost all the factories have disbursed salaries and festival bonuses to their workers in time so that they can celebrate the occasion with their loved ones.
“There were only 15-20 incidents this time,” said SM Mannan Kochi, acting president of Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA).
“Following reports from different agencies that labour unrest might take place in about 1,000 factories over wages and bonuses, we closely monitored the situation.”
The workers of Liberty Fashion Wears Ltd, however, staged demonstrations in Ashulia and Mirpur due to a delay in receiving their dues ahead of Eid.
“Liberty Fashion is facing a crisis due to lack of orders from international retailers. Still, the owner of the factory will pay the salaries and bonuses.”
British retailer Tesco recently cancelled an order worth $2 crore with the Savar-based factory after its surveyor team found problems with the building’s beams, slabs and columns, said Abdus Salam Murshedy, former president of BGMEA.
The owner is trying to recuperate the losses, Murshedy said.
The owner of Tuba Group, too, has been facing difficulties in clearing its payroll. “But he sold off the machineries from one of his factories to clear the dues,” Kochi added.

Liberty Fashion workers demonstrate for dues

At least 3,000 garment workers of Liberty Fashion Wears Ltd demonstrated yesterday at Zirani Bazar point on the Dhaka-Tangail highway, demanding payment for arrears and the festival bonus, police said.
SM Badrul Alam, officer-in-charge of Ashulia Police Station, said the workers took to the streets and blocked the busy road at around 10am for an hour.
“Police rushed to the scene and used rubber bullets and teargas to bring the situation under control. Nobody was reported hurt,” Badrul told The Daily Star by phone.
Marzina Begum, a helper at the factory, said they received Tk 1,500 in the afternoon. “We waited for the money for two days, but management did not pay us. At last, we took to the streets Monday.”
She said some workers received minor injuries at the clash with the police.
Marzina used to draw a monthly salary of Tk 3,200 and the same amount as over-time from the factory, she said. “But, I did not receive any salary or overtime money in the last two months.”
A manger at Liberty Fashion Wears said at least 3,000 workers of the factory gathered in the factory to demand arrears for two months and the Eid festival bonus in the morning, as management was delaying disbursement of payment to the workers.
“Workers did not receive their salaries in the last two months as Tesco suspended the company’s orders for structural flaws in the factory building in June,” the manger said, seeking anonymity.
He said management disbursed Tk 1,500 to each worker as an advance and the owner will pay the rest of the money after Eid.
Khairul Mamoon Mintoo, general secretary to Garment Workers’ Trade Union Centre of Savar and Ashulia, said the agitated workers had demonstrated in front of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association office on Friday to demand dues.
The workers had left the BGMEA office with the assurance that they would receive their dues through a negotiation on Sunday, he said.
The workers waited on Sunday, but management did not pay the workers, he added. “Workers began demonstrating on Monday for the arrears and bonuses.”

Liberty Fashion workers demonstrate for dues