Fire Safety in the Readymade Garment Sector in Bangladesh: Structural Inadequacy Versus Management Deficiency

Abstract

The readymade garment (RMG) industry plays a vital role in the socio-economic development of Bangladesh, yet the sector suffers from poor fire safety records. Given the lack of fire risk assessment in the industry, this paper develops a Fire Risk Index (FRI) for individual RMG factories and surveys 60 such factories to develop an understanding of the fire safety conditions in the sector. The paper differentiates the risk factors into structural (hard) and management related (soft) parameters and develops FRIs for the structural factors. The FRI for structural parameters is then compared with the FRI for management factors, published earlier. While an overall mean FRI of 2.12 on a 4 point scale indicates that fire safety condition is quite poor, the FRI for soft parameters (1.80) are even lower than the FRI for hard parameters (2.58), indicating the critical importance of the soft parameters in fire safety assessment of the RMG factories. Within the hard parameters, there appears to be more reliance on firefighting and means for escape than on precautionary measures to contain the fire, which could explain the higher frequency of fire occurrences in the industry. FRI for both hard and soft parameters appear to follow a U shaped relationship with factory size, possibly indicating a Kuznet's effect in fire safety in the garment sector. The poor FRI for hard factors indicates large deviations from safety requirements set in this work and asks for a stricter monitoring and enforcement regime. Improving the performance in the soft parameters, however, would require changes in the safety culture and practices.

Job Satisfaction and Citizenship Behavior: A Mediating Effect of Organizational Commitment

“…Job satisfaction in RMG is deemed to be very vital as the prodigious growth in the RMG industry of Bangladesh has been turned it into the second-largest exporting country in the world after China (Alam, Azim, & Alias, 2017;Muhammad, 2015;Wadud, Huda, & Ahmed, 2014). Notably, RMG alone earns approximately more than 84 percent of the total export (Islam, 2017;Shadat, Rahman, Rahman, & Hawlader, 2016) and employs more than 4 million employees (Ahmed, Hasanuzzaman, Chowdhury, Shaikh, & Munir, 2018;Bakht & Hossain, 2017;Rahman & Siddiqui, 2015;Wadud & Huda, 2017) along with nearly $30b export earning in FY18, from this sector (WTO, 2018).…”

Does compliance to standards in the ready‐made garments industry affect employee attitudes? A study in Bangladesh

“…Prior studies on the RMG industry observed that when an organization satisfies the prescribed standard related to occupational health and safety, building code, environmental issues, labor rights, fire safety, and other aspects of a conducive workplace, its employees' job satisfaction tends to increase (Alam et al, 2017;Manish et al, 2018;Wadud & Huda, 2017). The study of Sarker and Afroze (2014) also endorses our propositions, as they found that compliance with human resources practices improved job satisfaction among the workers of the RMG industry in Bangladesh.…”

“…The study fills the research gap highlighted in the introduction in various ways. First, for several years, there has been a growing concern related to compliance issues in the RMG sector from policymakers, buyers, and international interest groups (Ansary & Barua, 2015; Shadat et al, 2016; Wadud & Huda, 2017). However, the owners of RMG factories in Bangladesh did not pay enough attention because of their misconception about the benefits of such efforts.…”

“…Complaint factories in the garments sector in Bangladesh are viewed as rule-abiding entities and are accorded higher status by the public in general and by the buyers in particular. In the context of the RMG industry in Bangladesh, where discrimination, deprivation, and workplace violations are common phenomena, compliances such as health and safety (Manish et al, 2018), fire protection (Wadud & Huda, 2017), social, environmental, occupational, and physical standards (Alam et al, 2017;Shadat et al, 2016) are likely to enhance job satisfaction of the employees. Therefore, the following hypothesis is proposed:…”

Health Issues of Female Garment Workers: Evidence from Bangladesh

“…Globally, the garment industry is female-dominated (Solidarity Center, 2015a;Stotz & Kane, 2015), which accounts for three-quarters of total employees in the industry (OSHE, 2009;Heath & Mobarak, 2015;NHRCB, 2014;Stotz & Kane, 2015;Wadud & Huda, 2017). Female workers in Bangladesh are predominantly employed in the low-skilled and labor-intensive sectors which make them vulnerable to health issues (TIB, 2013).…”