The Bangladesh Government Has Promised To Strengthen Safety. Hundreds Of Garment Factories Have Been Restarted.

Hundreds of garment factories in an industrial park on the outskirts of Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh, will resume work starting today. < p >

Bangladesh garment manufacturers announced on Monday that they would close their garment factories in the Ashulia Industrial Park.

There are hundreds of garment factories in the industrial park, most of which are supplied to western famous brands, such as WAL-MART (Walmart), H&M, Tesco (Tesco), Inditex and Carrefour (Carrefour).

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Azm, vice president of Bangladesh clothing manufacturer and exporter Association, met with the government and labor representatives yesterday, saying: "we decided to start work again from Friday."

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< p > he said that the decision was made after the Bangladesh government guaranteed that it would provide "the highest level of safety measures" for the garment factories.

There are about 4500 garment factories represented by the association.

"We met with the Minister of the interior, the Minister of labour, and the workers' representatives. They promised to provide the highest level of safety measures for our factory."

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< p > he also said that the losses caused by demonstrations in the past two weeks amounted to at least 150 million US dollars (about 190 million Singapore dollars).

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< p > a serious collapse accident occurred in the outskirts of Dhaka last month. 1127 employees belonging to a number of garment factories were killed, causing concern from all walks of life in Bangladesh about the safety of garment factories.

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After the incident, a large number of Bangladesh garment workers also took to the streets in Dhaka, demanding that the government and manufacturers improve the safety facilities in the garment factories and substantially raise their minimum wage.

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< p > since November 2010, the minimum monthly salary of local garment workers has been maintained at $38.

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< p > the Bangladesh government set up a special group last week to explore the issue of raising the wages of 3 million garment workers in the country.

The government has also approved amendments to the labour laws to allow garment workers to form unions without requiring the consent of factory owners.

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< p > Bangladesh is the second largest garment exporter in the world with an export volume of US $20 billion.

Bangladesh's clothing industry exports 80% of the total exports of the country every year.

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