How useful are grievance mechanisms for garment workers? Insights from Bangladesh’s Amader Kotha helpline

After the Rana Plaza building collapse on 24th April 2013 in Savar near Dhaka in Bangladesh, two initiatives emerged that were tasked with improving situations in the country’s ready-made garment (RMG) sector: the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety (Accord) and the Bangladesh Alliance for Worker Safety (Alliance). The loss of more than 1,100 lives, many of them garment workers, and more than 2,500 injured workers, revealed on what shaky foundations many of Bangladesh’s RMG factories literally stood.

While the Bangladesh Accord (and now its successor, the International Accord for Health and Safety in the Textile and Garment Industry) focuses on structural, building and fire safety issues, the Alliance addressed occupational safety and health (OSH) issues as well. A real success was the worker helpline “Amader Kotha” (“Our Voice”), established in July 2014. It is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 18 months after inception already reached over 500,000 workers in more than 300 factories. The helpline received an average of 3,000 calls per month and callers (who may choose to remain anonymous) addressed issues not only pertaining to workplace safety but also to working hours and wages.

”A healthy grievance mechanism really is there as an early identifier of issues so that you can get to work in addressing and mitigating these risks.”

Five years after its establishment, the Alliance came to an end. In July 2018, it announced that it would transition its initiatives to an independent safety monitoring organisation (SMO) managed in partnership with credible, local partners. Among those transitioned projects was Amader Kotha, which since its inception had received more than 233,000 calls from workers in over 1,000 factories and more than 80 percent of all substantive issues had been resolved.

It is not uncommon for successful initiatives like these to lose steam once ownership changes but Amader Kotha proved doubters wrong. “We are delighted to continue this enormously beneficial program in collaboration with our project partners, Clear Voice, a project of The Cahn Group, LLC, and LaborLink, recently acquired by Elevate, a mobile platform that establishes a two-way communication channel between organizations and their workers,” said Suraiya Haque, founder and executive director of respected civil society organization Phulki, at the time.

Today, the Helpline is made possible through a unique collaboration among three project partners: Phulki, an NGO that works to improve the lives of workers and their families in Bangladesh; LRQA, a leading business risk and sustainability solutions provider, and the Cahn Group, which operates hotlines and builds effective grievance mechanisms in supply chains. A side session on 13th February 2026 of the OECD Forum on Due Diligence in the Garment and Footwear Sector shared insights from almost twelve years of Amader Kotha’s successful operation.

Amader Kotha’s reach till date

From July 2014 to January 2026, more than half a million (almost 520.000) calls have been received. The helpline’s coverage currently extends to 860 factories and 1.5 million workers. A majority of them (close to 60 percent) is between 19 and 29 years old; the remaining almost 40 percent between 30 to 39 years old, and only about 1 percent are older than that. The percentage of workers between 15 to 18 years is very low (0.04 percent) with adolescents (14-18 years) being legally allowed to work under the Bangladesh Labour Act 2006 but should be given only non-hazardous ‘light work’.

Callers are predominantly male (close to 60 percent), while the majority of garment workers (53 to 60 percent) are women. However, while numbers may still not be equal, the gap is closing: Female participation has increased from around 14 percent at inception to currently up to 45 percent. It is intentional that all Amader Khota operators from Phulki are women, as women are more comfortable sharing their grievances with other women.

Remarkable is that while only 22 percent of callers are willing to reveal their name to the factory, 85 percent are willing to reveal it to helpline workers, speaking for the trust and confidentiality the helpline has built over the years. An “indicator of trust and ultimately effectiveness,” according to Mac Ngo from LRQA that provides the technical support and backend data management.

“We never disclose a caller's identity to the factory management and always handle cases anonymously. However, there are a few cases that actually require disclosing a caller's identity due to their personal nature. … We ask the caller their consent and only if they agree to disclose their identity, we share it with the factory. But if they disagree, we share the factory management number to introduce them to the factory’s internal communication channel”, confirms Humayera Rahman, Amader Khota’s country director in Bangladesh.

How does the helpline grievance process work?

The helpline process is divided into eight steps: Once a report is received from a worker, its priority is assessed. “Low risk” would be matters pertaining to compensation (benefits and wages) and termination, “high risk” physical abuse and harassment as well as safety (cracks in beams, etc. or an active fire in the factory). Then, the factory is notified or, in urgent cases, the subscribing customer, to be able to prepare a remediation plan, which is the next step. This plan would be shared with the worker and remediation work started. Finally, helpline workers gather the garment worker’s feedback and resolve the case.

A case is considered closed after confirming from both parties, factory management and worker, that an investigation has happened and after the initial caller has confirmed and consented to considering the case resolved.

“Amader Khota actually works as a bridge for the factory management, worker and brand, and we support to ensure a long-term business sustainable relationship with the industry. Amader Khota reduces a brand's need to audit by supporting handling events directly and also introducing workers to the internal communication channels. Thus, we strengthen the factory’s internal communication channel process”, says Rahman.

Every call matters

Rahman has been in charge of the Amader Khota helpline since 2014. “My main responsibility in this project is to train and oversee the day-to-day operations with a team of ten operators. Our live operators receive calls for 16 hours, from 6 am to 10 pm, Sunday to Thursday, and the rest of the time, night shift, weekend and government holidays, our call recording service is activated. On the next working hour, our operators call those numbers back and reach all callers. Thus, we support 100 percent calls and reach 100 percent of all callers,” states Rahman proudly.

Workers become aware of the helpline through training sessions, posters at their workplace and other promotional material, as well as a card with the helpline’s tollfree number that they can simply keep together with their factory ID card.

"Remediation sits at the heart of the human rights due diligence movement”

For Vishal Gadhavi, responsible for social impact at Primark, it is all about learning and improvement. “How do we understand what works, what doesn't, so that we can ultimately support driving improvements and outcomes for workers?,” he asked. He pointed to involvement at the top level, like Primark’s ex-CEO and the general council of parent company Associated British Foods, who personally visited key offices in Bangladesh. “There is that buy-in and recognition about this specific piece of work, about really understanding the impact of all the work that we do, and especially this specific piece of work on understanding the effectiveness of grievance mechanisms,” he added.

“Remediation really sits at the heart of the human rights due diligence movement. And the ecosystem of remedy is one that comprises of multiple actors and multiple institutions. Within those, you'll find state-based actors and non-state-based actors. And within the non-state-based actors, the variety of grievance mechanisms is quite diverse — you have third-party funded, multi-stakeholder initiatives, but also operational-level grievance mechanisms,” pointed out Archana Kotecha from The Remedy Project, an organisation dedicated to supporting workers in the supply chain with special focus on grievance mechanisms and remedy.

For her, understanding the dynamics, relationships and the complementarity between the different mechanisms is vital in order to truly understand “how this ecosystem holds together”. “When looking at the effectiveness of a grievance mechanism, it is not simply the case of just looking at one ecosystem; it is actually multiple players and the interaction and how that generates the effectiveness of the approach,” she cautions.

If done correctly, “a healthy grievance mechanism really is there as an early identifier of issues so that you can get to work in addressing and mitigating these risks,” she remarked. “It is a place for engagement with workers and understanding their perspectives and building trust. Grievance mechanisms are empty unless they are clearly socialised with workers and they earn the trust of workers over time.”

Feedback aids prevention

A feedback loop is also a must: “The feedback loop essentially is the prevention part of remedy, which we often overlook. Remedy is not just about addressing harm that has been done. It is also about ensuring that the recurrence of the harm does not happen again,” clarifies Kotecha.

In terms of corrective remedial actions, Kotecha mentioned payment of overdue wages, disciplinary action in some cases against wrongdoers, and others. Going forward, one of the things to explore will be coming up with forward-looking preventive measures and potentially post-remedy monitoring.

The way forward

In closing, the participants agreed that the evaluation of the Amader Khota helpline marks a shift from treating the UN Guiding Principles (UNGP) as a “ceiling” to viewing them as a foundational “floor.” Instead of simply measuring the helpline’s internal metrics, the evaluation examines it within a broader remedy ecosystem, analysing the dynamics between factory-level mechanisms and third-party interventions. The research prioritises the quality of outcomes and rights-holder engagement over mere access, considering how external factors like political unrest influence grievance patterns. By focusing on remedy as both a process and a final result, the stakeholders aim to identify practical gaps and ensure the system is as effective in practice as it is in theory.

Central to this approach is a "co-creation" methodology that balances rigorous data collection with the need to protect worker trust and confidentiality. To include the vital voices of complainants without compromising their safety, the team developed a sensitive protocol where Phulki initially contacted workers to gain consent before introducing independent, Bangla-speaking evaluators for interviews. Initial findings highlight that while trust and 24/7 availability are critical to preventing retaliation, there is a growing need for specialised expertise in areas like gender-based violence.

Moving forward, the partnership intends to use these insights to transition from reactive case-solving to proactive, preventative measures, ensuring that the remedy system is sustainable and responsive to the needs of the workers it serves.

More information about Amader Kotha including a newsletter and successful remediation stories can be found on the official website, amaderkothahelpline.net.