Cabinet approves to the draft of Textile Law 2018

Desk Report: The draft of “The Textile Law 2018” has been given final approval by the cabinet yesterday at the weekly cabinet meeting held at the Prime Minister’s Office with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in the chair. The cabinet gave this approval considering the importance of huge apparel exports from Bangladesh.

Cabinet Secretary Mohammad Shafiul Alam, while briefing the reporters at Bangladesh Secretariat said, “To maintain the quality of textile products will be the prime focus of the newly proposed law as Bangladesh is earning huge foreign currency from this sector becoming the second largest RMG exporting country in the world.”

He also remarked, “About 83 percent of the country’s total export earnings came from the textile sector last year and apparel products worth over 29.26 billion dollars were exported in the last fiscal”.

As per Section 6 of the draft law, Alam said, the government could provide incentive for any textile industry to achieve the goal of enacting the law.

“A directorate will be formed with the Director General (DG) as its head to be appointed by the government, while necessary manpower will also be recruited for the organization. The DG will work as the registrar of the organization” informed the cabinet secretary.

There will be an officer who will be given responsibility to examine quality and standard of various elements including paint and other chemicals used in the textile products.

In this regard, Mr. Alam said “The government can establish international standard laboratory to accomplish such activities”.

About provision of punishment, it was said that the registration of any company could be suspended or even cancelled for giving wrong or false information while taking the registration.

The government can determine the registration system of the buying houses, giving registration certificate, suspension of registration, its renewal and other matters by issuing gazette notification if needed.

The cabinet secretary said that the responsible person could inspect any textile industry in the system fixed by rules whether the industry is run as per the condition of registration.

Mr. Alam further stated, “Any aggrieved person could lodge an appeal with the government within 30 days. The government or the directorate could hand over any power as per the conditions to be fixed in the order to any person, official and or organization”.