The government will not extend the stay of Accord and Alliance beyond the expiry of their current tenure in June 2018, Commerce Minister Tofail Ahmed said.

“In 2018, we will take our own responsibility,” he said at a meeting with a visiting delegation of the International Labour Organisation at his secretariat in Dhaka on Sunday.

“The Accord and the Alliance are not present anywhere else in the world. They will not be here in Bangladesh after 2018.”

The Accord and Alliance are legally binding agreements signed by a total of 228 foreign retailers in the aftermath of the Rana Plaza collapse in 2013 to fix the electrical, fire and structural faults in the garment factories from which they source.

The tenures of Accord, a platform of 200 Europe-based retailers, and Alliance, another platform of 28 North American retailers, will come to an end in June 2018.

After their departure, the proposed remediation coordination cell will monitor the safety progress of the structures, said a senior official of the labour and employment ministry.

The two platforms have inspected a total of 2,198 factories so far, according to Ahmed.

At the meeting, Elizabeth Faith Onuko, minister counsellor of labour of the permanent mission of Kenya to the UN, who led the delegation, said they are concerned about the rights of workers in factories housed with the export processing zones.

“The EPZ labour standards should be up to international standards,” she said.

In response, Ahmed said the government had earlier committed to foreign investors that trade unionism will not be allowed inside of EPZ, so it is not possible to renege on that word now.

The zones have a total of $3.74 billion investment from home and abroad, according to the Bangladesh Export Processing Zones Authority.

The foreign investors in EPZ are divided over the issue of trade unionism as they think the workers' productivity might be hampered.

It might also create labour unrest and closure of factories, as a result of which many workers might loss their jobs. And if the workers loss their jobs, there might be a social unrest.

“We do not want any social unrest,” the commerce minister said.

Currently, more than 4.40 lakh workers are employed in 453 factories spanning eight EPZs across the country.

So recently, the cabinet agreed in principle to allow the existing Workers Welfare Association (WWAs) in the EPZ factories to act as collective bargaining agents like the trade unions.

“We allowed the WWAs to work similarly as unions in the EPZ factories -- and there is no difference between the WWAs and trade unions.”

In Vietnam, only one union is allowed in factories, whereas in Bangladesh at least three are permitted, Ahmed said.

In the US, 35 percent of the public enterprises and 7 percent of the private enterprises allow unions.

Allowing trade unions in the EPZ factories was the last of the 16 conditions put down by the United States Trade Representative, the chief trade negotiation body for the US government, to regain the generalised system of preferences scheme.

“We have now fulfilled all the conditions provided by the US government. I do not see any reason why the US will not restore the GSP for Bangladesh.”

“It seems that we will not regain the GSP facility until the doomsday. It's a political issue now.”

This fiscal year, Bangladesh's exports to the US will cross the $6 billion-mark, up from last year's $5.7 billion.

Bangladesh's exports to the EU will also cross the $18 billion-mark this year from $17 billion last year, he said.

Ahmed also said the signing of the Trade and Investment Forum Agreement with the US is meaningless if the GSP is not restored for Bangladesh.

Bangladesh signed the Ticfa with the US in November 2013 with high hopes of regaining the trade privilege, suspended five months earlier citing serious shortcomings in workplace safety and poor labour rights.