Tripartite agreement signed among BILS, GSCS and BAPS

Fazlul Haque, Staff Correspondent: A ‘Tripartite Agreement’ was signed among Bangladesh Institute of Labour Studies (BILS), Global Sustainable Certification Services Ltd. (GSCS) and Bangladesh Apparel Professionals Society (BAPS) on Monday, 22 January 2018 at BILS Office under the project titled “To promote implementation of workplace Laws & Policies related to health and Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) in RMG factories” funded by Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, SNV Netherlands Development Organization.

The agreement aims at effectively utilizing relevant resources or expertise in applicable areas, successfully implementing the project actions in a joint venture and developing mutual understanding for a greater cause of Bangladesh RMG sector.

Legal Assessment, Capacity Building Training, Follow-up, and Lobby-Advocacy are all the key strategies to be followed in the project. Legal assessment traces to review on existing Laws, Rules and Policies on health & SRHR and to essentially capture factory level gap between knowledge & practice. Capacity sums up all the sections for enhancing the efficiencies of the related areas including Training Manual, Manual development team, Additional training materials, Participants, Action Plan for Training etc.

Follow-up is for tracking the progress of the implementation of workplace laws & policies in the factories and to provide support in system building, developing action plans etc. Lastly, Lobby-Advocacy refers to, with extended medical facility and availability of free family planning products, the ensuring of extended health facility for workers or health service inside the factory and Government family planning commodities accessible to factory workers as well.

These all strategies are to be, according to the agreement, implemented by the cooperation of BILS, GSCS and BAPS altogether.

Mr. Abdul Mottaleb, Managing Director- GSCS, Major Md. Mijanur Rahman Khan(Retired), President-BAPS and Syed Sultan Uddin Ahmed, Executive Director-BILS singed the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on behalf of GSCS, BAPS and BILS respectively.

Among others Mahbubul Haque, Vice-President-BAPS, Gazi Md. Salah Uddin, GS- BAPS, Nazma Yesmin, Project Coordinator-BILS , Rezoanul Haque Azom and Program Officer-BILS were also present.

They all expected the better outcome of the project by developing mutual understanding & cooperation with diverse stakeholders for a greater cause of RMG workers and exploring future partnerships on innovative & advanced workers’ issues like inclusive business, ethical trading etc.