Transparency at Cambodian garment units encourages ILO-BFC

22 Oct '14

2 min read

“We are encouraged by the improvements that have been made by the 248 garment factories in Cambodia since the Transparency program began,” the International Labour Organization’s Better Factories Cambodia (ILO-BFC) programme said.

ILO-BFC recently released its third online Transparency Report, which covers the period from July to September 2014 and presents working conditions of 248 Cambodian garment factories.

According to the report, two of the thirteen factories included in the low compliance category made 31 verifiable improvements and, as a result, moved off the low compliance list.

Low compliance factories are those whose performance falls two standard deviations below the mean for compliance on 52 keys issues among factories with three or more BFC assessments.

One-fourth of the 95 factories added to the critical issues list made improvements on 21 basic legal requirements in anticipation of their inclusion in the report.

The total number of critical issues violations in this group of factories fell from 109 to 75 between July and September, a 30% improvement.

Thirty-eight factories or 40% of the newly added factories were already in full compliance on all 21 of the basic legal requirements included in the critical issues category.

Another 12 factories that made verifiable improvements between July and September were able to move into this group of factories for a total of 50 factories or 52% with no violations of any critical issues.

Garment factories conducting regular emergency evacuation drills rose from 57% to 76%, while factories discriminating against workers dropped from 15% to 7% and those paying proper seniority-related bonuses to workers increased from 64% to 78%.

BFC’s Chief Technical Advisor, Jill Tucker says, “We are encouraged by the improvements that have been made by these 248 factories since the Transparency program began.”

He adds, “In many cases, factories had failed to make changes over a period of years, but they are now taking action as a result of transparent reporting.

“We look forward to continuing to work with the Ministry of Commerce and Ministry of Labour on this initiative, especially to make changes in the factories in the low compliance category.” (AR)

Fibre2fashion News Desk - India

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