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Department of Inspection for Factories and Establishments

department · partial (verified 2026-05-17)

Profile

Head
—
Role
Inspector General
Annual budget
—
Staff
1156
Established
1969
Legal basis
Established 1969 (Pakistan era) under ILO Labour Inspection Convention No. 81 and the Labour Policy of 1969 as the Directorate of Inspection for Factories and Establishments; placed under the Ministry of Labour and Employment after Bangladesh independence (1971); upgraded from Directorate to Department by the Ministry of Labour and Employment on 15 January 2014; primary operative statute is the Bangladesh Labour Act 2006 (as amended by the Bangladesh Labour (Amendment) Act 2026, gazetted 16 February 2026 and passed by parliament 9 April 2026).

DIFE is in an active enforcement transition as of mid-May 2026: the Bangladesh Labour (Amendment) Act 2026 (passed 9 April 2026) materially expands its penalty and investigation powers over the RMG sector and beyond; all factory licensing has shifted to the LIMA digital platform from FY2025-26; 11 Rana Plaza-related Labour Act cases remain pending in Dhaka's Second Labour Court; and the department operates at roughly half its sanctioned inspector strength (554 of 1,156), a persistent capacity gap that continues to constrain proactive inspection coverage across 83,591 listed establishments.

Recent activity

Provenance & notes

Established 1969 as Directorate of Inspection for Factories and Establishments under ILO Convention No. 81 and Bangladesh's Labour Policy of 1969; upgraded to Department status on 15 January 2014 with creation of 679 new revenue-budget posts. Sanctioned strength is 1,156 (revised organogram approved 2021-22) across headquarters and 31 district offices; active inspector count is approximately 554 with 122 further appointments in process as of April 2026 -- a deployment gap that constrains proactive inspection of 83,591 listed establishments. The head_role is Inspector General (IG); no publicly verifiable current IG name was identified in cross-checked sources as of the verification date, so current_head is null. The annual_budget_bdt field is null because DIFE's sub-allocation within the Ministry of Labour and Employment's Tk 438 crore FY2025-26 budget is not broken out in publicly accessible documents; the ministry total is noted in budget_actions instead. The verification_status is 'partial' on that basis and because the current IG identity could not be confirmed from two primary sources. The LIMA digital inspection platform (launched 2018 with ILO support, including three servers and 250 Android tablets) is the operative licensing and inspection management system; paper licences were fully phased out in FY2025-26. The RMG Sustainability Council (RSC) and DIFE's Remediation Coordination Cell (RCC) remain the joint oversight mechanism for the post-Accord/Alliance factory safety database; factories exited from RSC coverage have their full structural, electrical, and fire inspection reports transferred to DIFE.

Sources