Labour minister for a committee to attend to apparel buyers’ issues

Labour minister Khandker Mosharraf Hossain on Thursday proposed to form a steering committee comprising of representatives of buyers, government and exporters to instantly attend to the problems of foreign buyers of readymade apparels.
He mooted the idea at a meeting he had with the foreign buyers of Bangladesh readymade garments.
The minister said that he held the meeting to regain the confidence of international buyers thinking to shift their orders to other countries out of panic over the political instability.
Khandker Mosharraf assured the buyers that the political unrest would come to end in two or three weeks.
‘I requested them not to be worried about violence but to move with caution,’ Mosharraf later told reporters at the Probashi Kallyan Bhaban.
‘I assured them the political violence is a temporary phenomenon and it usually happens in Bangladesh in the election year,’ he said.
Mosharraf said that buyers expressed their grave concern over the current political turmoil saying they had invested billions of dollars in Bangladesh.
‘Buyers shared their feelings with us and we told them that the government is committed to ensure security of their investment,’ he said.
Replying to a question the fire at Standard Group’s factory, he said 45 or 50 people were arrested in connection with the incident.
They are under investigation, he said, but declined to share the details.
The foreign buyers already withdrew about 30 per cent of their orders citing security concerns, Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association president Atiqul Islam told reporters.
Atiq said the buyers clearly said that they had started shifting their orders to other countries including India, Vietnam, Cambodia and China because of the ‘unhealthy’ political atmosphere in Bangladesh.
Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association vice-president Mohammed Hatem said that that the country’s frequent political turmoil provided opportunities to India and Vietnam to become the main competitors of Bangladesh.
The government must take the initiative to regain the confidence of buyers, he said.
He also said that the recent growth of apparel exports from India and Vietnam only show that orders were shifted from Bangladesh.
The international community is also losing  confidence in Bangladesh due to political instability which is proving alarming for the export business, BGMEA vice-president Shahidullah Azim told New Age.
‘We only hope that the buyers would stay in  Bangladesh following government assurance that their investments would be 100 per cent risk free,’ he said.