Future of Compliance Job in Bangladesh

One day my younger brother has asked me " Brother, can you tell me something about compliance?". Since, you have been working since long in this field, pls share me some knowledge about it so that I can follow you also. Then I have decided to write down about it..

More than 78% of Bangladesh’s export earnings come from the garment industry. The ready-made garments (RMG) sector has a greater potential than any other sector in terms of employment and foreign exchange earnings to reduce poverty and make a contribution to the national economy. However working conditions in this vital sector are poor.

Most garments factories in Bangladesh pay little attention to labour standards and labour rights, disallow trade union activities, unsafe working environment, and ineffective laws and discard fair labour practices, and compliance enforcement is limited and limited role of stakeholders.

This has led to the labour unrest in the RMG sector. Consequently, many international buyers now demand compliance with their own Codes of Conduct before placing import orders for Bangladeshi garments.                                                                                       Source: http://goo.gl/W6yE0g

You know, Social compliance of RMG factories is a key requirement for most of the worldwide reputed garments buyers. It ensures all labour rights, labour standards, fair labour practices and Code of Conduct according to the ILO and WTO conventions. 

A key aspect of international buyers successfully applying pressure is monitoring (Compliance Auditing). Monitoring (Compliance Auditing) is needed to check that suppliers undertaking to adhere to codes of conduct are not empty promises.

But who should do the monitoring? In different countries different institutions, such as trade unions, employer associations, industrial tribunals, state-sponsored regulatory bodies or the civil courts, monitor and enforce labour standards (Gospel and Palmer, 1992). In Bangladesh, Some international Third party auditing firm conduct compliance audit based on different COC (Code of Conduct) ie SEDEX, BSCI, SA-8000 ect. These COC has been developed based on ILO convention.

In 2005 the Bangladesh government formed a Compliance Monitoring Cell to ensure implementation of the compliance issues in the factories in the ready-made garments sector. 

The ILO core 8 commonly include health insurance, compensation on death and injury, education or training allowances, childcare and assistance reimbursement, cafeteria plans, employee discounts, transportation and other similar benefits 19 labour standards adopted from the HR and IR philosophy guarantee an ethical standard. 

In addition, the Codes of Conduct upholds a certification system and encourages its members to ratify and implement core labour standards according to its Conventions (Moazzem, 2005).

The ILO governing body has developed eight fundamental conventions. These eight fundamental Conventions are:

(29) Forced Labour (1930)

(87)Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to organize (1948)

(98)Right to Organize and Collective Bargaining (1949)

(100)Equal Remuneration (1951)

(105)Abolition of forced Labour (1957)

(111)Discrimination (Employment and Occupation) (1958)

(138)Minimum Age Convention (1973)

(182)Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour (1999)

The ILO is responsible for overseeing international labour standards. It performs an important role in ensuring that labour law is applied equally to all employers and workers (ILO, 2005). Consequently, all ILO members’countries are obliged to respect labour standards and should include those labour standards in their national laws and policy.

Summary of the above is an organization should EXERCISE eight fundamental conventions of ILO as well as Land Law of the country. To implement these fundamental rights of ILO and Land Law is a very systematic task in an organization. Without having compliance expert who has depth knowledge on both, no organization can comply these. Moreover, due to monitoring system (Audit) from buyer end, without a satisfactory result in Audit , no International buyer will place order in any organization. Only a compliance practitioner knows all these things and make it implemented successfully to get the orders from buyers. Definitely, carrier on compliance is brighter in Bangladesh. 

 

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