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Wednesday, April 23, 2008

[chottala.com] Brands in garment and knitwear industry - public should get a piece of the PIE

Brands in garment and knitwear industry - public should get a piece of the PIE
At a time when government has started responding to the genuine needs of the businessman, the general public should demand more accountability, result and service from our businessmen. BBBF should take note.


I wanted to start this article with something like this: businessman should get in business and learn how to use their brains in addition to utilize the competitive advantages that they get for free. For free? Yes, its the cheap labor that they have been capitalizing on so far, its time to go beyond the traditional competitive mindset and produce some result. However, then there mind be another hue and cry from this community that their confidence is being hampered as it is the case in many issues with this community of ours (which has been whining for sometime now).

So, for the sake of improving the tone in our public discourse, I decided to rephrase the article as follows. Hopefully, the business will hear the message embedded before its too late. We all know what happens when a group of professionals fail to respond to the need of the time and serve the people's aspiration. Here is the rephrased article for your reading:

Bangladesh earns a huge amount of forex from garments and knitwear industry.

If I ask you to mention few brand names from these two industry, how many can you mention?

Moreover, what do they do well if there are some big garment industry? Can you distinguish one industry from the other looking at their products other than the fact that they are from Bangladesh? In other words, they have become big industries - but how? Did they learn to use their brain or did they just took advantage of being from Bangladesh? You may say - well, whats wrong with from being Bangladesh? No, No, we are not saying that there is something wrong with being from Bangladesh. Actually, being from Bangladesh brings some advantages for these businesses. They get cheap labour. And they get easy access to foreign markets. Using these two  advantage being awarded by their  countrymen, they do business. Its all well. It should be a starting point. They should not stop there. Value addition should end with a creation of popular brands at the product level. Let us ask a easy question plainly - to our NRB members. When you go to a retain store of any kind in North America or Europe (two major export markets for our garment and knitwear industries), can you readily say that a certain product is from Bangladesh without looking at the "Made in Bangladesh" tag? It would be very surprising if some of you answer this question in the affirmative. It should be a taken as a challenge by our business community to change this scenario within a couple of days. We should establish at least few brand names that can be recognized without looking at the tag.

Next issue that we want to raise is related to the other issue. If it has been so far the case that success is coming from the cheap labour and the national level preferential treatment, what has the businessmen done to give back? I know what some of you might say - well, they are providing employment. True, for many working women and men, they have been helpful. But those are barely enough. These business houses that are earning billions of takas, they should have a much better trackrecord of giving back to the society. Moreover, they should also share their wealth with their nation. Their should be a cap-limit where the companies will be asked to offer ownership to the public through IPO.

Now many would also disagree on this issue. However, if these business houses offer public share and raise additional funding, they can use that additional resources to invest in creating brands of their own - and thereby addressing both of the limitations that we raised in the previous two paragraph. Hopefully, it will be done sooner than later.

If you thought some of the ideas are worth of your reading time, please forward it to others. If you have an ear to the columinsts in regular traditional media, please forward it to them. If you have an ear to the journalists and news editors of the electronic media, discuss it with them. Hope they would look at the suggestions and give due diligence. 
 
Thanks for your time,
Innovation Line
 
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Note: This is a freelance column, published mainly in different internet based forums. This column is open for contribution by the members of new generation, sometimes referred to as Gen 71. If you identify yourself as someone from that age-group and want to contribute to this column, please feel free to contact. Thanks to the group moderator for publishing the article.
 
Dear readers, also, if you thought the article was important enough so it should come under attention of the head of the government please forward the message to them. Email address for the Chief Advisor: feeedback@pmo.gov.bd_ or at http://www.cao.gov.bd/feedback/comments.php . The more of you forward it to them, the less will be the need to go back to street agitation. Use ICT to practice democracy. It is already proven that this government responds to the feedback.

Send it to FBCCI: fbcci@bol-online.com_
Send it to SEC: secbd@bdmail.net

(Its surprising to notice that none of these two organization have their own email system setup using their own domain. It tells something about these two organization, doesn't it?)

Also send to your favourtie TV channel:
Channel i: http://www.channel-i-tv.com/contact.html
ATN Bangla: mtplive@atnbangla.tv_
NTV: info@ntvbd.com_
RTV: info@rtvbd.tv_
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[chottala.com] Bangladesh would be isolated from the rest of the world if .....................

 

 

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Re: [chottala.com] Open Source Workshop at Chittagong University

Dear Mr. Shehab, Good morning from Qatar. I commend you for providing hands-on skills to our future leaders of the country. Before I write to you, it is better that you know me. My name is Jamir Chowdhury. I was a student in 1979-80 Batch-Public Admin/Pol. Science. I later went to USA for higher education and got my MA (Sociology and Anthropology, stat and computer) and Doctoral (Education, Stat and computer). Currently, I work as a Senior Consultant to Qatar University, Doha, Qatar. My field of work is Institutional Research, Measurement, Evaluation and Planning. This field requires knowledge and skills in educational research, computer and statistics. If I look back to all of my course work (subjects and contents of the subjects) in BA and MA programs that I studied at CTG, I feel very bad. As a brother, I would request you to see whether you could conduct an Alumni survey in order to understand how your study helped you to perform in the work place. Based on the study results, the program could be modified and revised to prepare the students for real work place. The education must prepare the students for professional and life time survival.
 
Please feel free to review and share information in the links and the attached instrument. I would like you to share this information and your thoughts with Dr. Badiul Alam sir (VC). I am sure that he will appreciate your initiative. I am sure that you need money to carryout this project. I am willingly tell you that I will finance the total cost of the project (hard copy and online survey). If you are also interested to develop a Website for Alumni purpose, you can count on me. Thank you again for your initiative.
 
On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 3:42 PM, Abu Mohammad Omar Shehab Uddin Ayub <shehab@bdosn.org> wrote:

Open Source Workshop at Chittagong University

A two day workshop on "Open Source Software and Technology" will be held at Chittagong University (CU) on 24-25th April 2008. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, CU and Bangladesh Open Source Network (BdOSN) jointly organize the workshop.


The first day of the workshop will cover the philosophy of Open Source software and content along with Wikipedia, Linux installation and distribution. The first day will be concluded with the formation of local Open Source network. The second day of the workshop will cover the details of Joomla content management software. Besides the chairman of the department of computer science and engineering of CU, honorable vice chancellor of the universities, dean and other will join the workshop. The workshop will be conducted by Mr Munir Hasan, Mahay alam Khan, Omar Shehab, Arafat Rahman, Subrun Jamil and Ferdous Tanin from BDOSN. It is expected that the workshop will be attended by around 100 of the students from Chittagong University.

--by BPR


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Regards,
Abu Mohammad Omar Shehab Uddin Ayub
Software Engineer, Nilavo Technologies, Banani, Dhaka
Bangladesh Open Source Network, Dhaka
2000 batch, Dept. of CSE, SUST
www.nilavo.com
www.bdosn.org
www.sust.edu


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