BGMEA has decided to cancel the membership of more than 1,100 factories that remained closed for a long time and were not in the export business, sources said.
They said the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) has taken the move recently to ensure compliance issues and transparency.
The initiative is also aimed at finding out the actual number of functional units and their workforce, they said, adding that Covid-19 vaccination of all the workers was also considered.
When asked, vice president of the apparel sector apex body Mohammad Shahidullah Azim confirmed to the FE that the BGMEA board on August 7 last has decided to cancel the memberships of 1,140 factories.
"Most of the factories remained closed for a long time while many have not renewed their registration for the last couple of years," he said.
"We have also decided to give the time until October 30 next for membership renewal. If they fail to do so within the deadline, their membership will automatically be cancelled," he told the FE on Tuesday.
Initially, the trade body has identified 1,140 factories that are not in export business, he said, adding the units that are not currently operational should be removed from the BGMEA's registered members' list to avoid many untoward issues.
Mr Azim said they will shortly notify the identified factories about the decision and ask to renew their memberships by October 30 next and resume operations as soon as possible.
According to the industry insiders, a good number of the 1,140 factories were doing subcontracting jobs.
After the Rana Plaza building collapse in 2013, they said the BGMEA member factories have made significant improvements in terms of workplace safety and working conditions.
But the sector is still facing criticism over compliance issues because of some units that are not in production and out of export business, they pointed out.
There are also a good number of factories that have not existed for more than five years, but still are members of the BGMEA, they added.
Such factories have little scope to resume operations, they noted, adding most of them were maintaining the membership to take part in the trade body's elections.
Earlier in 2016, the then BGMEA board found that a total of 1,163 member factories remained closed but they enjoyed the membership of the trade body.
Despite their non-existence, they were members of the BGMEA as they paid annual subscription fees, the 2016 BGMEA board observed.
According to BGMEA's official website, it has around 4,500 member factories. Around 40 per cent of the factories are knitwear and sweater manufactures, and remaining 60 per cent are woven garment manufactures.
The BGMEA member factories account for 100 per cent woven garment exports of the country and more than 95 per cent of sweater exports, while around half of the light knitwear exports are made by them.
Mapped in Bangladesh (MiB), a digital mapping technology that tracks the export-oriented RMG factories in the country, found that a total of 2,184 factories are registered with the BGMEA.
Out of the factories, some 253 are also members of the Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BKMEA).
According to MiB, about 518 factories are associated with BKMEA while 672 units are not associated with any of the two trade bodies.
The MiB until June last tracked a total of 3,384 RMG factories across the country.
Munni_fe@yahoo.com