ISLAMABAD: The Ministry of Commerce and Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, Germany signed an Implementation Agreement (IA) ) in pursuance of Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) meant to improve labour, social and environmental standards.
On December 23, 2020, the Economic Affairs Division (EAD) and Germany signed the MoU in which government of Germany agreed to support two projects and one is on “improvement of labor, social and environmental standards in Pakistan’s textile industry (TextILES)”.
Under the program, Germany would provide GIZ up-to Euro 7,500,000 as German contribution for period of three years. The signing ceremony was participated by Razak Dawood (Advisor to Prime Minister on Commerce and Investment), Dr. Sohail Rajpoot (Special Secretary, Ministry of Commerce) from Pakistan side and Ms. Romina Kochius (Principle Advisor GIZ) from Germany side. The technical cooperation on this project aims to increase value-addition and competitiveness, and foster innovation by synergizing the environmental, social, and economic dimension of sustainability in the textiles and apparel industry. The outcome of project would be to support digitalization of Labor and Human Resource Department’s (LHRD) downstream institutions like Punjab Employees Social Security Institution (PESSI), formulation and implementation of measures to ensure sustainable production, transform 15-20 companies who made use of good environmental practices, innovative technologies or labor standards to move to higher value addition or entered new markets, initiate 2 campaigns on Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) particularly for SMEs to achieve international certification in labor and environmental standards.
Razak Dawood, the Advisor to Prime Minister met with Ms. Romina Kochius (Principle Advisor GIZ) and acknowledged Government of Germany and her for the valuable support in respect of technical cooperation to Pakistan’s textiles and apparel industry in order to improve labor conditions, compliance standards and resource efficiency. The ceremony ended with notes of thanks from both sides.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2021