Bangladeshi apparel industry is facing acute manpower dearth, which has become a troubling issue for the industry as it leaves over 30 percent of production capacity inoperative.
Due to the impact of economic slowdown, RMG industry of the country, which is the highest foreign currency generator industry, is still witnessing negative export trend.
Global financial meltdown lead to closure of hundreds of garment factories, and uneven gas and electricity supply to these factories intensified industry crisis affecting the production capacity of rest of the factories.
Number of sewing machine operators is decreasing, against the number of machines in RMG factories, owing to which large number of sewing machines remain idle.
As per the factory owners, manpower shortage has become an enduring problem for these factories as every month around 30 percent of the factory workers shift to other factories looking for salary hike.
In addition to this, less number of training institutes for garment factories is deepening the problem. Very few number of skilled and semi skilled workers come out each year from these institutes, against the requirement of large number of workers.
Setting up more training centres by the government could solve the labour issues of country's garment industry. There are around 6,000 garment factories in Bangladesh RMG industry, which directly or indirectly employ about 3 million people.