The European Union has urged Bangladesh to take decisive steps and lasting measures to address shortcomings in human rights and labour rights to continue receiving tariff preferences in the economic block under everything but arms facility.
The EU provided a list of ‘suggested actions on labour rights’ to the Bangladesh government in the last week of November, which includes nine issues and requested the government to develop and submit to it a draft time-bound roadmap by January 2 for addressing the issues.
The nine issues are amendment of Bangladesh Labour Act, labour rules and EPZ labour law in line with International Labour Organisation conventions, establishing an action plan to eliminate child labour by 2025, combating violence against workers, increasing success rate of trade union registration application, eliminating backlog of cases at labour courts, filling the vacant posts of labour inspectors, ensuring proper work of remediation coordination cell and ratifying ILO conventions 29 and 138.
