Alliance, the factory
inspection platform of 28 North American retailers, will leave Bangladesh in
July next year after the completion of its five-year tenure. A total of 234
Alliance-affiliated factories have completed all material items in their
Corrective Action Plans (CAPs) and 162 non-compliant factories have been
suspended from the Alliance factory list for delays in upgrading of their CAPs.
More than 1.3
million workers across 941 Alliance and non-Alliance factories have access to
the Alliance''s confidential worker Helpline. Democratically elected Worker
Safety Committees that give workers a seat at the table in monitoring safety
issues have been established in 171 factories. More than 1.4 million workers have
been trained in basic fire safety, and 1.3 million have participated in
refresher courses.
Nearly 27,000
security guards have been trained in fire safety leadership while about 20,000
have received refresher training. Alliance has designed a safety training
workshop for senior factory managers and partnered with the Bangladesh
University of Engineering and Technology on a graduate-level short course for
Bangladeshi engineers, both designed to build in-country capacity on safety. Fortifying safety in factories and equipping workers
with empowerment tools is Alliance’s focus. Factories are demonstrably safer
today than when Alliance started working.