GTZ PROGRESS

Poverty reduction

PROGRESS has a special bearing on boosting the first Millennium Development Goal “Poverty Reduction”. The program enhances the active participation of the poor, by mobilizing entrepreneurial and economic resources especially along the RMG supply chain. It contributes to job creation and security and better employment and working conditions of about 3.000.000 workers of which 75% are women. This is in line with the goals of the National Strategy for Accelerated Poverty Reduction (NSAPR) which singled out the RMG sector and small and medium sized enterprises (SME) as the motor for creating jobs and incomes, capable of absorbing much of Bangladesh’s rapidly growing labor force. Furthermore, the sector provides excellent income opportunities for marginalized and deprived females, who thus get access to formal income and modern life.

On a more general note PROGRESS interventions contribute to reduced vulnerability of the poor finding employment in the RMG sector. Better social, environmental and production standards as promoted by PROGRESS lead to direct and indirect improvements especially regarding the workers’ economic/livelihood and socio cultural situation. In particular interventions aiming at the empowerment of workers enable them to claim their entitlements as provided in the revised labor and environmental laws. Improved livelihood and work place skills paired with an increased economic power and enhanced legal rights as promoted by PROGRESS contribute too to poor workers’ abilities to cope better with calamities in their lives such as family health and financial problems.

In particular, PROGRESS improves the:

• economic situation through (a) enhanced income by payment of at least minimum wages, (b) creating better employment security through skill development, and (c) creation of additional jobs through strengthening of the competitiveness of individual factories
• basic living conditions by e.g. enhanced occupational health and safety measures and application of better child care facilities. These lead to health and hygienic standards which enable the workers to perform better at their workplace and to engage more effectively in pursuing work place improvements,
• socio cultural situation by interventions in the field of social empowerment of women. This leads to improvement of their social status and their influence within the factories and society as a whole. Therewith, workers’ possibilities of participating as a valued member within the community and society at large are enhanced
• political dimension of poverty is not only targeted through government support, but also through improved representation of the workforce on the local and national level due to better knowledge of the labor law and through the introduction of structures of co-determination, like Workers’ Committees.