EU team due today
A four-member European Union parliamentary delegation will arrive here today to assess the post-January 5 general election scenario, human rights situation and progress of workers safety in RMG industry.
Jean Lambert, chair of the European Parliament delegation to South Asia, will lead the team during its two-day visit on March 24-25.
The delegation will meet Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Jatiya Sangsad Speaker Shirin Sharmin Choudhury, Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali, Commerce Minister Tofail Ahmed, BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia, civil society representatives and trade union leaders.
This mission comes ahead of the first anniversary of the catastrophic Rana Plaza building collapse, which cost over a thousand lives of garment workers, according to a press release of EU embassy in Dhaka yesterday.
It said the European Parliament will discuss with the relevant stakeholders, “the implementation of the measures adopted to improve factory safety and workers' rights, notably the EU-Bangladesh Global Sustainability Compact.”
Concerned that the political parties did not manage to agree on an inclusive mechanism for the January 2014 elections, the EP delegation will discuss the post-election scenario as well as social and economic issues with key Bangladeshi decision-makers and civil society representatives, the press release noted.
Diplomatic sources attach high importance to the delegation's visit as the mission is apparently to find facts to assess a host of pressing issues like workers safety and rights, post-election political situation and extra judicial killings and disappearances, which have increased alarmingly recently.
The team will also visit five other countries -- Bhutan, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Nepal and Pakistan -- as part of its mission.
The members of the cross-party EP delegation are Jean Lambert (Greens /European Free Alliance), John Attard-Montalto (Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats), Salvador Sedo i Alabart (European People's Party), Niccolò Rinaldi (Alliance of Democrats and Liberals).
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