US: Bangladesh must do more to regain trade perk

Bangladesh needs to do much more on improving labor standards to win back duty-free trade benefits suspended after the global textile industry's worst disaster, US officials said today.
Washington suspended the benefits last June, two months after the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory building in Dhaka that killed 1,129 people. The disaster put a grim spotlight on low wages and lax safety in the impoverished nation's lucrative apparel business that exports nearly USD 5 billion annually to the US.
Among those providing written testimony to a Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearing on Bangladesh was Reba Sikder, 18, who was pulled from the rubble of the Rana Plaza after being trapped for two days. She recounted her struggle to recover.

"What has been most debilitating is the trauma and panic I still feel, which has made it virtually impossible to find work," said Sikder, who attended the hearing, but did not speak in person. "I feel afraid just looking at tall buildings and I am scared to go inside. I worry there will be another collapse."
Senior Labor Department official Eric Biel said that late last month, the US conveyed to Bangladesh that despite progress in some areas, it had not done enough under an action plan laid out by Washington for restoration of the Generalized System of Preferences, or GSP, that gives duty-free on some 5,000 products.

Biel said there's a "great deal" to do on implementing important elements of the plan, including on allowing unions, a process which he said was at a "very early stage." He the US in cooperation with international partners needs to continue "to hold the government of Bangladesh's feet to the fire." The next review on restoring GSP is due in May.

Biel said so far relatively few safety inspectors have been hired by the government and they still cannot inspect dedicated export processing zones, where unions also remain off-limits. Biel further criticized severe restrictions on collective bargaining and recent reports of union organizers being harassed.

Lawmakers, however, questioned whether GSP provides much leverage. It covers less than 1 percent of Bangladeshi exports, not including garments, and that industry has continued to prosper in the past year.
Durbin described it as a "crass political move to punish him in some way and sadly to punish millions of people who depend on that bank to survive." Top US diplomat for South Asia, Nisha Biswal, echoed that sentiment, saying the bank's mission in helping poor women and families was under threat.
"That is a deep shame and travesty," she said.