DHAKA – A new online beta platform borne out of Dhaka, Bangladesh, holds the potential to radically improve transparency in the country’s ready-made garment sector, by mapping the locations and production details of native suppliers.
The Mapped in Bangladesh platform, created by Dhaka’s BRAC Institute, has been a work-in-progress for a number of years as a team of 40 researchers walked street-by-street to identify manufacturers, both large and small, before on-boarding them onto an online system.
With this dataset, brands and retailers will be able to filter through criteria – such as the customers a factory has, the certifications they’ve attained, their manufacturing specialisms, and whether they’re a member organisation of either the BGMEA or BKMEA, respectively.
“We’re doing the ground work, and we’re looking for collaboration so that people can use this data,” project lead Hasib Hussain tells Ecotextile News. “We feel energised that our dataset can be used by lots of different partners.”
