Apex Footwear to provide jobs for 800 climate refugees in Gaibandha

DHAKA, July 14 (BSS) - Apex Adelchi Footwear Limited (AAFL),the nation's leading footwear exporting company, has promised to provide jobs to 800 extreme poor people who turned refugees domestically due to factors associated with climate change such flood and river erosion in northern part of the country.

The footwear company that alone shares almost half of country's footwear market singed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for partnerships with NGO Gano Unnayan Kendro who will help each other to find deserving candidates and build skills before their employment.

Funded by SHIREE, GUK has set up a project to help build the skills of 1,500 extremely poor people living in Gaibandha, while Apex will provide technical assistance to develop appropriate skills of the people to absorb in the company.

"The footwear industry in Bangladesh is growing fast but our biggest constraint is to find skilled and semi-skilled labour. NGOs and other development agencies can support the growth by developing new manpower for the sector," said Md. Mominul Ahsan, head of human resources of AAFL at Gaibandha after signing the MOU.

"We believe the private sector has a critical role to play in helping the nation to achieve MDG-1 for eradication of extreme poverty and hunger. We are extremely grateful that Apex is setting example to address MDG and climate change challenges," said Kishore Kumar Sarker, project manager of GUK.

Gaibandha is a disaster-prone area where people are vulnerable to regular flooding and riverbank erosion. Extremely poor in nature with an average income of less than Taka 22 per day, the poor people of the district lack work opportunity during April, July, and September to November each year, when they face seasonal unemployment known as "Monga".

The project hopes to address this problem by training these
poor people and linking them to job opportunities around the
country.

Apex Adelchi accounts for 45 per cent of the total footwear
exports from Bangladesh. With 6 percent of share in local market,
they are behind only Bata Shoe, which holds 22 percent of market
share.

It has a production capacity of 15,000 pairs per day for
exports and an additional 5,000 pairs per day for local market.
The company achieved net sales of Taka 5.6 bn in 2008.

According to a 2010 report of Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics
(BBS), 41.2 per cent of people are poor. Among those, 31.9 per
cent is poor and 9.3 percent is ultra-poor.

Despite efforts from the government, donors and NGOs, the
situation is expected to go worse because of Bangladesh's high
vulnerability to climate change and its associated extreme
weather events that are more visible than anytime before.

Environmentalists and experts feel Bangladesh might lose up
to 17 per cent of its land and as many as 30 million people may
lose homes due to sea level rise.

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