Skills development in RMG sector

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Building on the building blocks of low wage rate, our RMG sector has been labeled by foreign buyers as a low cost hub for high volume product sourcing. This is fairly ironical that people are proudly selling ourselves as the least expensive human resource to make sure our growth driver RMG to remain competitive in the global market. Barely, we are planning of the changes this sector will encounter following the much-talked graduation to a developing economy. Most of all, the cultural-shock in RMG sector involving this paradigm shift will demand proper preparedness and if not doing this, the worst hit will be faced by our 4 million workforce in this sector largely due to low productivity in conjunction with insufficient skills development schemes.

RMG ECOSYSTEM AT REGIONAL PEERS

Bangladesh: Largely because of its low wage rates, less expensive of utilities and preferential trade agreement with EU, Bangladesh excels at supplying large levels of apparel at low costs. Our specialisation ranges mostly in low-value and affordability price segment. However, Bangladesh has had issues on compliances and promptly delivery.

Vietnam: Due to high foreign investments (predominantly from China) and joint ventures which bring along technical know-how and expertise, Vietnam has grown its apparel exports significantly. Moreover, these factors in conjunction with supportive government policies have provided added advantage for the growth of textile ecosystem and infrastructure in the united states and which makes it globally more competitive in comparison to other sourcing destinations.

Sri Lanka: Despite higher living wages, Sri Lanka has emerged as a huge player in global apparel market due to its product portfolio, which largely accounts for higher-value, niche products. It has a big skilled workforce, that allows it to create specialised products. Sri Lankan factories have been concentrating on sustainability and compliance for a long time. While, these initiatives have helped create better value to the customers, it has additionally resulted in optimising the expenses of manufacturing.

India: India's status as an apparel sourcing destination owes to its strengths namely, abundant way to obtain raw material, vertically integrated supply chain, expertise in value added apparel manufacturing, availability of skilled manpower and well-established relationship with key global buyers. India, as opposed to most of the other Asian peers - has the advantage of an extremely rich heritage of Textiles.

SKILLS DEVELOPMENT IN RMG SECTOR: Competitiveness in the global apparel trade is generally challenged by insufficient scale in garment manufacturing due to personnel skill-set. Then comes seasonality (manufacture only certain product categories), inadequate capability in the synthetic value chain, limited number of preferential trade agreements etc. Arriving at Bangladesh, our garment export industry is seasonality driven, resulting in full capacities for season-specific production and evidently, competing nations have different skill regime to suit their local, cultural and commercial factors. Bangladesh is no exception in this instance.

The personnel in garment industry are usually classified as unskilled, semi-skilled, skilled and highly-skilled. Usually skilled and very skilled workforce at a factory floor performs critical businesses such as collar attachment, sleeve placket attachment etc., which require certain set of expertise and know-how. Without the proper group of skills, these operations can't be performed and if performed wrongly, it could lead to rejections and wastages. Without the requisite workforce to execute these operations, factories would face delivery delays, quality issues and bottlenecks at production floor. So that it is very important for factories to have employees across different skill levels from unskilled to very skilled level to make sure smooth operations, quality and timely delivery.

Studies discovered that each country has developed certain skill levels to match the product categories they manufacture. The clients place orders for several product categories with these countries to match the existing skill levels of the workforce in these countries. India owing to its relatively higher skill levels, suits value added products which are low to medium quality with certain degree of value addition. In the event of Bangladesh and Vietnam, the skill levels have already been developed during the last 1-2 decades and these countries predominantly cater to basic products.

THE CASE OF BANGLADESH: Bangladesh has a multi-pronged skill building approach involving various government agencies, private institutions and industry. A few of the key initiatives are Centre of Excellence for Bangladesh Apparel Industries (CEBAI), Bangladesh Skills for Employment and Productivity (B-SEP) etc. The abilities development system in Bangladesh could be classified into five main segments:

* Public (Delivered to various degrees by numerous ministries)

* Private (Get a government subsidy e.g. grant)

* Private (Commercial training institutions including madrashas)

* Non-government and Not-for profit institutions

* Industry-based / Brands (institutions managed by industry and training delivered at work, including apprenticeships)

However, stakeholders are putting their concerns regarding the much talked shortage around 1.47 lakh skilled manpower from floor to the executive level. This, eventually, compels the factory owners to activate expatriate employees in several positions such as CEO, CFO, general manager, senior manager, head of dyeing, head of washing, and head of quality assurance.

Moreover, industry insiders predict that universities, technical institutions provides textile and garments-related education to around 25,000 to 30,000 people, which is much too inadequate considering the requirement of the industry. Another concern blown by industry leaders that the RMG sector will require eight hundred thousand specialised employees by 2021 will be very difficult for factory owners to source locally. Moreover, they advise that the sector will need 1.89 lakh graduates and textile experts for top positions by 2021 while Bangladesh will be able to produce around 40,000 by the time.

AREAS NEEDING SPECIAL FOCUS IN THE CONTEXT OF BANGLADESH

Entry-level skills: These should continue in today's sort of existing guidelines of Integrated Skills Development Scheme.

Up-skilling: Up-skilling is extremely important to operate a vehicle productivity. Only entry-level training isn't sufficient to build productivity and efficiency. Existing workforce need to work at a better skill level with operational capability across different operations at production floor to donate to overall productivity in the factories.

Training of Middle Management:  Middle management i.e. supervisors, section in-charges, quality controllers, industrial engineers etc. will be the backbone of any garment factory and ought to be trained on guidelines, by allocating at least 2 hours every day. 

Vocational Education: Vocational training ought to be given high priority and really should be accepted as a university degree/diploma for apparel manufacturing.

To combat the aforesaid challenges of our growth driver, there is no best alternative than re-skilling the whole sector starting from recruiting to machine resources. As a whole, preparing updated curriculum, conducting need-based research, establishing teachers training centres and knowledge sharing platforms, capacity development of mid level managers, making bridge between industry and academia and adopting paradigm-shift in policy crafting will be the blocks to embrace upcoming changes and shifts.
Source: https://thefinancialexpress.com.bd

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