In order to avoid US from banning imports of Indian garments, owing to employing children as labourers, the government has planned an informal grading system for textile units. For the same, government has joined hands with exporters to push factories in Delhi and Mumbai for implementing international practices in textile units.
More so, to convince the US government, about its serious intentions of eradicating child labour, the government will also be establishing cells, dedicated to look in to cases of suspected child labour in the industry.
US have warned India about including it in the Trafficking Victims Protection Re-authorisation (TVPRA) list and the Executive Order 13126 List (EOL) of the Department of Labour for making use of child labour. This warning could possibly lead to bigger buyers from US, such as GAP, H&M, Diesel, Walmart, M&S and Levi's boycott Indian textiles, thereby, resulting in to bigger loss for exporters.
US accounts for 30 percent of India's net garment exports, which is worth $10 billion. Therefore, the government has taken it up as an important mission to disprove US that Indian apparel industry is making use of forced child labour.
Currently, Indian government is in discussions with the US government to persuade them to not include India under the TVPRA and EOL lists.
However, these efforts are over the regular compliance code for the industry, which is being worked out by the Apparel Export Promotion Council (AEPC), the government-sponsored body of garment exporters in India. This body will ensure eradication of child labour and compliance with environmental requirements such as dangerous substances, chemicals, domestic sewage, waste handling, recycling practices and personal protective equipment.
Apparently, as per industry experts, this is one-of-its-kind industry-owned compliance project. The focus of this project is both to develop an India-specific code of ethics and also provide training and methodologies to build capacities.
Fibre2Fashion News Desk - India
20240830145952.gif)
.jpg?tr=w-120,h-60,c-at_max,cm-pad_resize,bg-ffffff "UBM China (Shanghai)")
-Ltd..jpg?tr=w-120,h-60,c-at_max,cm-pad_resize,bg-ffffff "Thermore (Far East) Ltd.")
