Bangladesh Bank Governor Dr Atiur Rahman speaks at a seminar at a hotel in Dhaka Sunday. sun Photo

The Bangladesh Bank Governor Dr Atiur Rahman has called upon all the banks and financial institutions not to finance any errant garment factories.

“We urge the banks and financial institutions not to provide any financial facility to non-compliant garment factories,” Dr Atiur Rahman said, while emerging from a seminar held in the city Sunday.

The call from the BB boss came, following the collapse of a Savar building that housed five RMG units on Wednesday, leaving nearly four hundreds dead.

From now on, he said, such financing would require compliance letter as the central bank has been working to make sure that RMG units are developed in a compliant way.

“We’ve to make sure that greedy factory owners don’t get any facility from the country’s financial sector and its executives have to ensure us that they won’t encourage such people,” Atiur said.

Terming the Savar mayhem a “collective failure,” he said the government, development partners, private organisations and trade bodies have to work together to fend off such incidents further. However, he sees the accident as an “opportunity” for the nation, hoping that it could be an eye opener for all.

When his attention was drawn to the fact that many RMG factory owners happen to be bank owners also, the Governor said in such cases, chief executives of those banks would be held responsible for the violation of any directives of the regulator.

The governor also applauded the courageous rescue operation conducted by the combined forces and the civilians, saying that the spontaneous response from the people to the accident was unprecedented and unique in the world.