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Cambodia has been plagued by the problem of child for years. A new agreement between the International Labor Organization’s Better Factories Cambodia (BFC) and the Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia (GMAC) is the latest effort to eradicate child labor in Cambodia’s garment industry.
Under the plan, workers under the age of 15 will be identified, offered access to suitable vocational training institutes and paid the equivalent of their average monthly factory pay until they reach 15. Factories will get financial support from GMAC to support age confirmation and remediation costs. The Cambodian government has reaffirmed its commitment to end child labor across all sectors from 16.5 per cent in 1999 to 8 per cent in 2015, and eliminate the worst forms of child labor, like performing hazardous work, completely by 2016.
GMAC has been working with BFC on a project to monitor factories and help them maintain improvements for the last 14 years to establish a zero tolerance policy toward child labor.
ILO Better Factories Cambodia uses a number of means to detect workers below 15 years of age. It crosschecks information obtained from documents and interviews suspected workers prior to determining whether or not they are underage. If they are confirmed to be at least 18 years old, no further investigations are undertaken. If age-verifying documents appear unreliable, or do not match the information obtained through the worker interview, monitors may undertake an in-depth investigation at the suspected underage worker’s birthplace.
Migrant workers in Thailand’s apparel sector are supposed to earn a minimum wage, but a new study on the working conditions of migrants from Myanmar revealed that the workers are making roughly half of what they are owed. Workers are denied the right to collective bargaining and social security, and are also denied the legal minimum wage.
Overtime is also a common requirement. On an average, work days last nearly 11 hours, reaching as long as 12 to 16 hours during peak period or when deadlines must be met. Thailand’s major garment production sector is in an area bordering Myanmar. A significant portion of the factories there are sub-contracting for factories in central Thailand and workers don’t know which brands they are producing for.
By focusing production in border towns, the garment industry aims to reduce production costs by hiring migrant workers, who are seen as desperate and therefore easily exploited, at below the minimum wage. A campaign has been launched to ask brands to stop being complicit in this systematic wage theft and ensure that all workers in their supply chain, including migrants, are paid living wages. Migrant workers make up an estimated 10 per cent of the Thai workforce.
Tanzania has embarked on a plan to enhance its cotton productivity. While production was 3,50,000 tons in 2011-12, it went down to 246 tons in 2012-13, slumping further to 201 tons the following year. Lack of a reliable input supply system and frequent changes in world market prices are affecting performance in yield per hectare.
There has been an increase in cotton farming and ginning capacity with the number of ginneries increasing from 36 in 1993 to 56 ginneries now. The number of cotton buyers has also increased to about 35 companies. The problem of poor seed germination can be dealt with through contract farming where farmers' business groups will be centers of cotton sales and custodians of their own products. In contract farming, the system of using cotton agents' ginners would be abolished. Such a model of cotton production will not only assure farmers of better seeds for planting but will also ensure quality yields and high income since cheating through weighing scales will no longer be there Tanzanian cotton, is 100 per cent rain fed and is produced by small scale farmers owning farmland of between two to 10 hectares. An average 4,00,000 hectares is grown each season at an average 300 kg per hectare yield.
The natural silk industry in Cambodia is on the verge of extinction. The widespread use of pesticides has damaged the health of silkworms. Thus producers have had to rely on imported synthetic fibers to meet demand. Global demand for silk in recent years has remained between 300 and 400 tons but the production of natural silk in Cambodia has continued to fall, and now it’s only one ton a year. The problem lies in the extensive use of chemicals on farms. Villages use chemicals on their rice crops, and in agriculture, which badly affect the silkworms. Silkworms living in polluted environments produce poor quality and smaller amounts of silk. An unhealthy silkworm produces up to 100 meters of threads in its lifetime. A healthy silkworm can produce nearly five times that. The Cambodian hand-woven silk industry is characterized by strong skills base and a long traditional heritage. Weaving and wearing silk is a cultural and social tradition in Cambodia. Silk is a prestigious fabric and very popular among Cambodians. The country is known for its silk handicrafts. Silk is a significant item in the country’s export basket and is an important source of employment for women and households in rural areas.
News and indices of worldwide cotton marketing and prices. Put simply, stay ahead of the game by being well informed about your developments affecting your competitors and customers, and gain insight into independent views on cotton market developments.
Research, development and innovation to benefit wool producers. This is a specialised section of the wool industry with limited supply and very specific requirements in terms of processing performance.
For Bangladesh’s apparel sector 2014 was an eventful year. Around 400 small and medium-sized factories have been shut following a work order deficit, turning around 10,000 workers unemployed. After the Rana Plaza tragedy, work orders reduced drastically as international buyers pulled out. As a result, many small and medium-sized garment factories had to shut their operation.
Accord and Alliance, the two platforms of the EU and American buyers, completed their inspection at garment factory buildings. The two platforms were formed following the Rana Plaza collapse with a view to inspecting readymade garment units from where they sourced apparels. Alliance has inspected a total of 587 garment factories since 2013 while Accord has so far inspected 1,613 units.
The year 2014 was also remarkable for the apparel industry. The sector which shares a lion’s portion of the export earnings, around 80 per cent, experienced bitter export growth. In addition, the sector failed to meet the export target in the last half of the year 2014 set by the government. Exports of the woven sub-sector during the year showed a shortfall of 10.57 per cent over the target.
Garment exports to one of the major destinations – the US market -- were not as per expected during the year 2014.
Pakistan's garments export posted a robust growth of 10 per cent to US$ 826.836 million in July to November 2014-15, but exporters denied the official statistics. Overall readymade garments export shows a US$ 73.395 million growth in July to November 2014-15, comparing to the apparel export of US$ 753.441 million in July to November 2013-14, according to Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS).
In term of volume, the garments export grew by 1,043,000 dozens (9.09 percent) to 12,540,000 dozens in July to November 2014-15 from 11,497,000 dozens in July to November 2014-15. However the valued added textile exporters rejected the growth projected through official statistics. For instance, according to Pakistan Readymade Garments Manufacturers and Exporters Association (PRGMEA), there is an ample unsold cotton stock, which shows the value-added textile is not doing well in the absence of proper power and gas supplies to manufacturing units. It also blamed the government saying since Commerce Ministry failed to evolve a plan to help the exporters, they could not capitalise on the GSP Plus status to the EU markets.
According to the industry body, the official figures are not reflecting on the real conditions of the country's export, adding that the growth should have been more than 30 per cent instead of 10 per cent since the country enjoyed the GSP Plus status in one of the world's expensive markets.
"The government has no aim or vision to boost up the export as there has been no new textile policy to help steer the exporting sector to a healthy growth," Khokar added. He said the country's total value-added textile output stands at around 60 percent for want of gas and supplies to manufacturing units, which clearly denies the government's claims projecting a healthy growth of 10 percent.
In November, readymade garments export stood at US$ 169.068 million up by US$ 19.217 million (19.19 per cent) from US$ 149.851 million in November 2013. Volume of garments export also posted an increase of 187, 000 dozens (8.24 per cent) in November 2014 to 2,456,000 dozens from 2,269,000 dozens in November 2013. www.prgmea.org
It was a turbulent year 2014 for Asia’s textile industry: soaring labor wages in China, violent workers’ protests in Cambodia and collapsing factories in Bangladesh.
China has already lost its appeal as a cheap garment producing country and foreign apparel retailers have turned to factories in Bangladesh and Cambodia in recent years. But workers in these cheap garment producing countries are also increasingly agitating for better pay.
Many textile retailers already have begun sourcing clothes from Ethiopia. Foreign textile investors benefit from an abundance of cheap labor, cheap energy and locally produced cotton. In neighboring Kenya, the textile industry is also expanding. The government is trying there to lure manufacturers with generous incentives.
East African countries have the potential to become a serious alternative to East Asia in terms of textile manufacturing. Apart from lower labor costs, it is quicker and cheaper to ship textile products from Africa to the main markets in Europe and the US, rather than from more distant countries in the Far East.
African countries also have duty-free access to the US textile market under a special trade agreement signed in 2000. And by utilising and expanding native cotton production, producers can avoid expensive imports by using local materials.
BGMEA and a Chinese company will jointly carry out feasibility study and environmental impact assessment on establishment of the proposed garment industrial park at Baushia of Gazaria in Munshiganj, to accommodate the non-compliant units.
Orient International Holding Company (OIH) will finance the expenditure, while Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) will provide the necessary technical support to conduct both the study and the assessment by April to develop the park.
The feasibility study will scrutinize all the related issues, including total cost of developing the park, financing procedures, repaying and duration of fund, developing the park - either in the form of plots or buildings and their number, expected employment generation, and time for relocating the factories and its procedures. The environmental impact assessment will include management of industrial waste materials, and their impact.
The feasibility study will also decide how long OIH will operate the park, when it will hand over its authority to BGMEA, and how it will be done, sources said. The proposed garment park also included establishing a 300-MW power plant, central effluent treatment plants, container terminals, and dumping yards. The study will fix how these things will be set up as well as their capacity and operation, they said. www.bgmea.com.bd
