HC questions legality of Accord's 3yr extension
A bench of the High Court Division issued a rule nisi on the extension of the tenure of the Accord for three more years, as the foreign building inspection agency unilaterally terminated business ties with a Chittagong based garment group recently.
Justice Refaat Ahmed and Justice Md Salim issued the rule nisi on Thursday based on newspaper reports on illegal termination of business relations of the Accord signatories with Smart Jeans Ltd.
In the case, the petitioner Mostafizur Rahman, chairman of Smart Jeans, said the Accord suspended the business relations with him unilaterally and illegally as he fully complied with the safety measures of the Accord and Alliance.
The Alliance signatories and sometimes the Accord signatories source garment items from three of Rahman's factories—two inside the Chittagong Export Processing Zone and one in Chittagong—but not on a high volume, he said.
So, Alliance, the North American inspection and remediation agency, has inspected three factories, Rahman said.
After the inspection, Alliance engineers certified that the group completed all Corrective Action Plan in November last year. With the certification by the Alliance engineers, Smart Group has been continuing its business with the Alliance signatories.
However, the Accord also reviewed the corrective action plan of the Alliance in the same factory. After the review, Accord said that it is not satisfied with the remediation and suspended business relations with Smart Jeans, Rahman said.
“I do the business with the Alliance signatories now, then how Accord can suspend business with us as they are doing the same kind of work,” Rahman asked.
“Since the Accord took a unilateral decision of suspending the business relations, I have gone to the court and filed a writ petition against the Accord.”
Rahman said the Accord cannot take such unilateral decision as they agreed earlier that they will accept each other's (Accord and Alliance) certification to avoid overlapping in inspection, monitoring and remediation.
Now, the court issued a rule nisi and wanted to know why the extension of the Accord will not be declared illegal in seven days.
The court asked Rob Wayss, executive director of Accord for Bangladesh operations, and secretaries to the ministries of commerce and labour to explain why the extension of the Accord would not be declared illegal in Bangladesh.
“The Smart group factories were reported to be perfectly compliant in December 2016 while the Accord terminated them only on some few issues of fire safety,” said Md Yousuf Ali, lawyer of Rahman.
Ali said there were conflicting outcomes of the two stakeholders acting under the same rules and these were striking questions before the court in the case.
“I have not received any thing from the court nor from the lawyer. Of course, there was a hearing in the court in this connection,” said Rob Wayss. “We will not comment now as a legal proceeding is going on.”
Rahman started his garment business in 2000 and exported garment items worth $130 million in the last fiscal year.
The group employ 15,000 workers, Rahman said, adding that he might not make any profit because of such initiatives by the Accord.
The Accord, a five-year legal platform, was formed in May 2013. The first phase of its tenure expired in June next year.
Alliance is also a five-year platform of 28 North American retailers and brands to inspect and remediate the factories in Bangladesh.
Nearly 2,000 factories are members of the Accord while over 700 factories are the members of the Alliance.
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