Tesco and Asda check abuse claims in Bangladesh

Supermarket firms Tesco and Asda have said they were looking into allegations of worker abuse at garment factories used by their suppliers in Bangladesh. The retailers’ comments came after a Guardian investigation claimed that workers making clothes were paid as little as 4 pence an hour. Tesco said it had done all it could to ensure “high standards and good conditions” in the country. Asda said any abuse was “unacceptable” and it may audit its factories. The textile industry is a large employer in Bangladesh In its report, the Guardian claims that garment workers are regularly forced to work 80 hours a week in factories where conditions are often violent, and where staff do not have access to trade unions. Allegations of abuse of workers in South Asia’s textile industry are nothing new. We have done all we can to ensure that high standards and good conditions are maintained Charities such as War on Want have campaigned for years to improve the pay and conditions for garment workers in Bangladesh and last year wrote a report based on interviews with 60 workers from six garment factories. The group claimed that retailers could only sell their clothes at very low prices by pressuring suppliers in developing economies to keep costs down. As a result, suppliers in countries such as Bangladesh have had to drive down wages and extend working hours, as there is stiff competition for the retailers’ business from other developing nations such as China.

Asda told the Guardian: “We find abuse of any kind unacceptable.” The retailer blamed the problem on the fact that one of their approved suppliers was outsourcing its work to another factory without its knowledge and against its wishes. Tesco said it had taken steps to improve working conditions. “We have stuck by Bangladesh, continued to invest in modern factories and done all we can to ensure that high standards and good conditions are maintained,” the UK’s largest supermarket firm said in a statement. The company added that in many ways it would be easier for them to stop sourcing garments “in countries that have economic and social problems, which are beyond the capabilities of any organisation working alone to fix”.

Tesco launches retail test lab in B’lore

Thanuja B M BANGALORE

RETAIL major Tesco has unveiled a retail test lab in its Bangalore facility. The lab will replicate its entire point-of-sale testing infrastructure in the UK and will test and certify new software to be used in 1,500-plus stores in the UK and the Republic of Ireland. Mr Sridhar Rathnam, head, IT services, Tesco Hindustan Service Centre (HSC) said: “We have set up a 7,000 sq-ft lab in our campus which has 30 different tills and 5 different store formats. This will be used to test and validate software releases which are introduced into Tesco stores worldwide every year.”

The company is currently in the process of transitioning much of the testing work of software. “About 80% of the testing will be done in Bangalore while only the last bit of integration testing, including mainframe integration and credit card pin testing, will remain in the UK lab,” he said, adding that the new lab is also planning to work on automation of the processes of the software. The number of store formats will be increased to 40 formats by the end of the year. While the first phase will also have petrol filling stations (PFS), later phases will add new generation formats like PFS (with Pay@Pump), Self Service Checkouts, Grocery Home Shopping etc. Queried on investments, Ms Meena Ganesh, CEO of HSC, declined specifics but added that Tesco had invested about 30 million pounds in the Bangalore centre so far and the lab was a significant part of that investment. The lab in Bangalore will employ about 50 test analysts and testers doing system and functional testing. The software which Tesco uses in all its stores is custom developed by Israeli company Retalix.

The new lab has already made its presence felt after having worked on a significant part of the testing phase for Tesco’s recentlylaunched software Progress 3.8. This new software release had a few business functionality changes and included the ‘chip-in-pin’ functionality and base software testing (the latter two were done in India). The Bangalore team is now working on 5.01 software.

ET