Problems of Garments Industry in Bangladesh

The Ready Made Garments industry of Bangladesh has expanded dramatically over the last three
decades. In the field of Industrialization garment industry is a promising step. The sector now
dominates the modern economy in export earnings, secondary impact and employment
generated. It has given the opportunity of employment to millions of unemployed, specially
innumerable uneducated women of the country. It is making significant contribution in the field
of our export income. Bangladesh exports 35 types of garment products to about 31 countries
around the world. That Bangladesh today is considered an economic competitor in terms of
international garment manufacturing by other countries of the region and beyond is the country
since gaining independence in 1971. it appers much of the socio-economic development in the
first decade of the twenty-first century for Bangladesh and its approximately 1.5 million women
workers depends on the continuing success of the RMG industry. But there are some challenges
in case of garment industry in Bangladesh. They are-
 Bangladesh imports raw materials for garments like cotton, thread color etc. This
dependence on raw materials hampers the development of garments industry. Moreover,
foreign suppliers often supply low quality materials, which result in low quality products.
 Taking the advantages of workers' poverty and ignorance the owners forced them to work
in unsafe and unhealthy work place overcrowded with workers beyond capacity of the
factory floor and improper ventilation. . The owners profit are the first priority and this
attitude has gone to such an extent that they do not care about their lives
 In the garment industry in Bangladesh, tasks are allocated largely on the basis of gender.
This determines many of the working conditions of women workers. All the workers in
the sewing section are women, while almost all those in the cutting, ironing and finishing
sections are men. Women work mainly as helpers, machinists and less frequently, as line
supervisors and quality controllers. Men dominate the administrative and management
level jobs. Women are discriminated against in terms of access to higher-paid white
collar and management positions.
 There are gender discrimination in case of wage rate in garments industry in Bangladesh.
 Insufficiency of loan in time, uncertainly of electricity, delay in getting materials, lack of
communication, problem in taxes etc.
  Most of the illiterate women workers employed in garments are unskilled and so their
products often become lower in quality.
 There are some other problems which are associated with this sector. Those are- lack of
marketing tactics, absence of easily on-hand middle management, a small number of
manufacturing methods, lack of training organizations for industrial workers, supervisors
and managers, autocratic approach of nearly all the investors, fewer process units for
textiles and garments, sluggish backward or forward blending procedure, incompetent
ports, entry/exit complicated and loading/unloading takes much time, time-consuming
custom clearance etc.
 Because of the carelessness of the factory management and for their arrogance factory
doors used to be kept locked for security reason defying act. Safety need for the worker is
mandatory to maintain in all the organization. But without the facility of this necessary
product a lot of accident is occur incurred every year in most of the company. Some of
the causes of these accidents are- routes are blocked by storage materials, machine layout
is often staggered, lack of signage for escape route, no provision for emergency lighting,
adequate doors as well as adequate staircases are not provided to aid quick exit,
emergency fire exit or emergency staircase is hardly found, etc.
Prospect of Garments Sector
BGMEA (2015) the readymade garment sector in Bangladesh is a multi-billion-dollar
manufacturing and export industry. Despite many difficulties faced by Garments sector over the
past few decade, it continued to show the robust performance and competitive strength. The
resilience and bold trend in MFA phase-out period partly reflects the imposition of 'safeguard
quotas' by US and similar restrictions by EU administration on China up to 2008, which has been
the largest supplier of textiles and apparel to USA. Other factors like price competitiveness,
enhanced GSP facility, market and product diversification, cheap labor, increased backward
integration, high level of investment, and government support are among the key factors that
helped the country to continue the momentum in export earnings in the Garments sector (Kibria,
2009).

Presently Garments sector contributes around 75 percent of the total export earnings. Over the
past one and half decade, RMG export earnings have increased by more than 8 times with an
exceptional growth rate of 16.5 percent per annum. In FY06, earnings reached about 8 billion
USD, which was only less than a billion USD in FY91 (Kibria, 2009).. The growth pattern of
RMG exports could be categorized into two distinct phases. During the initial phase, it was the
woven category, which contributed the most. Second phase is the emergence of knitwear
products that powered the recent double digit (year-on-year) growth starting in FY04.In the
globalize economy and ever-changing fashion world, product diversification is the key to
continuous business success (Chowdhury et al., 2014).

The development of Garments Industry is considered as the priority area in the development
policy in many countries, especially in Bangladesh. The young entrepreneurs are engaged in
varied form of small and medium scale garments industry which comprises of products like
shorts, trousers, shirts, sweaters, blouses, skirts, tea-shirts, jackets, sports attire and many more
casual and fashion items with the changing times (Chowdhury et al., 2014). The RMG sector
alone does export worth $21.5 billion a year, which is 79 percent of the total export earnings of
our country. Over the last three decades, our apparel industry has achieved a phenomenal growth
due to policy support from the government, dynamism of the private sector entrepreneurs and
extremely hardworking workers. Now the number of RMG units is more than 5,000 and export
earnings have reached $22 billion with more than one hundred countries using 'made in
Bangladesh' knit garments and woven products (Islam, 2015).

References

Chowdhury, M.M., Ahmed, R. and Yasmin, M. (2014). Prospects and Problems of RMG
Industry: A study on Bangladesh, Research Journal of Finance and Accounting, 5(7), pp. 103-
119.

Kibria, M.G. (2009). Problems and Prospects of Garments Sector in Bangladesh-An overview in
the context of recent global Recession, Discussion Paper, Department of Business
Administration, East West University, Dhaka.

BGMEA (2015). Prospect and Challenges of Garment Industry.