Ready Made Garment (RMG): Health and Hygiene Intervention
Phulki along with its awareness and capacity-building training programs in the RMG sector are also distributing sanitary products to female employees at a low cost. Square Toiletries Ltd. is in partnership with Phulki’s cost-sharing policy of offering discounted napkins to Phulki for the RMG employees.
Ready Made Garment (RMG) sector is the mainstay of the Bangladesh economy accounting for 81% of the country’s total export income. Bangladesh has set its record as the third-largest maker of clothing in the world, having more than 3,000 factories currently employing close to 4 million people, 85% of whom are believed to be women. The majority of RMG consists of immigrant employees from underprivileged backgrounds. Nevertheless, due to the need for more readily available SRHR information, Bangladesh has also been seeing women employment consistently declining in this sector.
The available data has allowed Phulki to mediate the health imperative, advance knowledge, and encourage the involvement of industry stakeholders along Bangladesh’s garment value chain (businesses, workers, service providers, agencies), in order to bring about a lasting change under the more general rubric of a rights-based approach.
Phulki has been impeccably performing in increasing awareness and capacity-building programs in changing workers’ behavior, promoting hygiene habits, ensuring the availability of sanitary pads, establishing a Family Planning Corner in the workplace, and increasing the factory’s capacity to address employees’ needs. The awareness programs have also helped the garment industry’s management to understand the context of their female employees. Hence they began purchasing sanitary napkins for their employees and offering them at a low cost. Phulki through its platform of collaboration between GO-NGOs has created a long-lasting mechanism to improve access to family planning and health services.
Square Toiletries Ltd. has been in partnership with Phullki and has been distributing sanitary products to RMG employees at a discounted price. Currently, sanitary napkins are sold to the employees at BDT 32, and 26 garment firms buy them from Phulki for their manufacturing operations.