The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) has been awarded the "WITSA Global ICT Excellence Awards" in "sustainable growth or circular economy" category for using "biometric identity and worker information management system"

The award was given at the 25th World Congress on Information Technology (WCIT 2021) in Dhaka Saturday. BGMEA Director Rajiv Chowdhury received the award on behalf of the association.

Shahid-Ul-Munir, vice chairman of the World Information Technology and Services Alliance (WITSA) for Asia-Pacific, handed over the award.

WITSA is the leading recognised voice of the global digital technology industry, whose members from over 80 countries and economies represent more than 90 per cent of the world's ICT market.

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The WITSA Awards recognise the entities that made the most significant contributions to mankind in 2021.

The BGMEA started preparing a biometric database of garment workers in 2013.

The "biometric identity and worker information management system" stores workers' records, including information related to their employment and identities in the local and cloud server databases.

Now the database is being used by about 2,500 member factories of the BGMEA for more than 4 million workers every day.

Also, the BGMEA and Brac University (BracU) is collaborating to develop a digital repository of the workers of the export-oriented apparel industry.

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The repository can be used to design significant interventions and formulate policies for the workers' well-being.

The BGMEA and BracU also inked an agreement in 2016 to support the collection of credible and comprehensive data about the apparel industry and prepare a publicly accessible interactive online map of the industry under the project "Mapped in Bangladesh."