Haiti’s economy, and particularly the garment sector, was severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The country continues to struggle politically and economically in 2022 with the rise of the dollar, general inflation, food shortages, the cholera epidemic and the proliferation of armed gangs. This series of crises bring more challenges to the Government, businesses and the population’s well-being.
In such a context, past gains in poverty reduction have been undone. The lack of improvement in critical dimensions needed to reduce poverty negatively affected household incomes across the country. This situation has seriously affected the functioning of economic life, health services, and various other sectors including the garment industry. Some factories faced operations disruptions for days and others for weeks. There were three factories in Better Work Haiti’s portfolio that closed their doors permanently mainly for business reasons. It has been an ordeal for workers to commute to the factories because of the fuel shortage affecting public transportation and insecurity concerns.
Although the Haitian garment sector has shown a great degree of resilience throughout the years and in fact, the total value of goods exported has revealed an increase of 14.5 % for the period ending August 2022 when compared with the same period ending August 2021.
This report presents an overview of non-compliance findings in 31 participating factories in Haiti, which were assessed at least twice by December 2022.
Better Work Haiti conducted hybrid as well as in-person services during this period, with the support of inspectors from the Ministry of Labor. During the hybrid assessments and hybrid advisories, labour inspectors visited factories on-site and Better Work staff supported them remotely. The factories’ improvement plans were verified either in person during factory visits or virtually through requests for documentation during advisory services and conversations with bipartite committee members, including workers and management.