Chapter- One
Introduction

1. Introduction

Over much of the last decade, Bangladesh’s economy has maintained a high, 6 percent growth rate. Although the country remains one of the poorest (it ranks 146th out of 187 countries in the UNDP’s latest Human Development Report), experts are generally optimistic about its growth trajectory – recently, the director general of the World Trade Organization (WTO) said that Bangladesh was “well on track” to achieve its development goals to become a middle-income country by 2021. The garment industry, which makes up 80 percent of the country’s export earnings and employs over 3.6 million people, has played an enormous role in the country’s economic progress. Due to a number of factors but mostly lower working wages, Bangladesh has beaten some of its neighbors like India, Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia to become one of the world’s largest clothing exporters – second only to China.
Since the workers of garments industries are driving the economy of Bangladesh to a large extent it is necessary to ascertain a healthy working environment for the workers. The labor law, 2006 states a number of rules regarding safety, health and hygiene and welfare of the workers of Bangladesh. In order to evaluate the true picture of the garments sector a survey has been made on a garments company named “Best Shirts Ltd”.
This report presents a detailed explanation of the health and welfare conditions prevailing in that garments factory. Here an effort has been made to capture the authentic picture of the internal condition of the garments factory.

1.1. The Bangladesh Labor Act, 2006

The Bangladesh Labor Act 2006 (BLA 2006) both consolidates the law that existed in 25 Acts and Regulations (including the Factories Act 1965, and Industrial Relations Ordinance 1969 - all of which have now been repealed) whilst at the same time making some