48 Bangladesh, Burma and the Rohingya crisis businesses, improving the provision of skills in the pervasive garment-making sector and also construction, formal job creation, and improving the quality of existing formal jobs in the garment sector.138 112. We received favourable impressions of a number of providers, and from a number of beneficiaries, of such programmes during our visit to Bangladesh earlier this year. These included: a maker and importer of shoes who was looking forward to opening a second (tiny) shop and renegotiating the terms of his import deal; a number of women investigating the potential to move from solo home-working on garments to some form of collective or association, and a further group of solo entrepreneurs being assisted in documenting their financial ‘identity’ as a foundation for discussions with a bank about access to finance. 113. Two issues came to the fore during this portion of the visit that we raised with Minister Burt when he came to give evidence at the conclusion of the inquiry. First, we visited an impressive collaboration between DFID, Ambagan Technical School and a number of private sector sponsors, under the Underprivileged Children’s Education Programme (UCEP). This is a project to re-connect young people with education and vocational skills training. It was quite clear from the students we talked to that, without the incentives of UCEP’s structure and the likelihood of employment, the chances of them spending time back in education, as opposed to informal employment, was remote. However, DFID is withdrawing funding from the initiative and we challenged the wisdom of stopping something that seemed to be working well. Richard Montgomery, DFID Director, indicated that the point behind projects such as UCEP’s Ambagan school was to showcase the approach, draw in other funding and become self-sufficient. He said that UCEP would be able to apply to a successor challenge fund (but acknowledged the process was a competitive one). On a practical note, he added: “we have this dialogue with a lot of organisations and every time we say, “Okay, we are not going to stick to what we said before, and we are going to give you another piece of funding”, we create an incentive for the next round of negotiations with another organisation. That is problematic.”139 We acknowledge the principle of seed-funding, showcasing and consequent self-sufficiency but are grateful for the Minister’s under-taking further to consider the funding of UCEP’s programme for disadvantaged youth skills training. We look forward to a report of his conclusions as part of DFID’s reply to this report. 114. Secondly, we visited an obviously and avowedly successful garment manufacturer in a special enterprise zone in Chittagong which was receiving DFID’s support to implement a superior training methodology which got workers from induction to the factory floor more quickly than traditional methods and with superior productivity. We questioned why such a business needed subsidy from UK aid to train its workers? 115. Minister Burt summarised the approach by saying “sometimes programmes are designed to encourage those who have the resources to place the resources in the right place.”140 Richard Montgomery, DFID Director, recalled the infamous Rana Plaza building collapse141 and the consequent coalition of Bangladesh authorities, aid donors, NGOs and retailers (including many big UK brands) which worked together to improve 138 139 140 141 DFID country programme briefing Q284 Q279 The Rana Plaza disaster, DFID & FCO, April 2014