A preparatory conference was held in Berlin on Thursday at the Humboldt-Viadrina School of Governance to address the issues of Bangladesh readymade garment sector in the backdrop of Rana Plaza tragedy at the suggestion of Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus.
Convened by Yunus Centre and the Humboldt-Viadrina School of Governance, the preparatory conference was held with a view to organizing a global conference to launch Garment Industry Transparency Initiative [GITI], said a Yunus Centre press release.
Around 135 representatives from Government, NGOs, garment industries, labour associations, academics, and other attended the conference while Professor Peter Eigen, founder of transparency international [TI], responded positively to take steps to create GITI, following the example of Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI).
This approach is set out as a joint approach of Governments, factory owners, labour, and the retailing companies, and the civil society in both producing and consuming countries. It will find an agreement among the involved parties with regard to comprehensive standards on labour conditions. Yunus Centre in Dhaka, and the Humboldt-VIADRINA School of Governance in Berlin are carrying out founding of GITI jointly.
Conference started with a keynote speech from Professor Yunus. He highlighted the major issues relating to garment industry and proposed, a comprehensive global initiative to solve these problems across all garment producing countries. Among other things he proposed an international minimum wage for garment workers worked out for each country separately. This wage, he proposed should be accepted as a compliance issue, and should not be a subject of any price negotiation.
International buyers will accept this as part of production cost and make sure price negotiation should not impact on this wage in any country. He also elaborated his idea of creating social businesses to offer "Happy Workers Tags" at an additional cost of minimum of 10 percent on top of the production cost. This money will be used by social businesses to deliver important social and health services for a specific period, to the specific group of workers who were involved in producing those garments.
Following Professor Yunus' presentation, officials ILO [International Labour Organization], FEMNET [Feminist Perspectives on Business, Politics and Society], the German Federal Foreign Office, Otto Group spoke on the idea of creating GITI, and additionally it may bring in resolving the problems existing in the industry.
The preparatory conference ended with by creating a six members Steering Committee co-chaired by Professor Muhammad Yunus and Professor Peter Eigen.
It was decided to convene a formal launching event in Berlin on October 14 this year which will give officials from Governments, international organizations, business sector, labour organizations, and civil society the opportunity to discuss the scope and lines of action of GITI in detail.
Professor Yunus later met the dirk Schattschneider, Director General of Policy Planning and Communications, Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development, met Ms Conelia Fullkug-Weitel Ma, leading member of SPD who specializes on international cooperation issues, and addressed the NGO leaders of Germany, staffs of Transparency International at its headquarters.