Background The Ready-made Garment (RMG) industry is Bangladesh’s greatest contributor to gross domestic product growth and has played a significant role in the country’s improved performance against world development indicators. The industry represents 75 percent of Bangladesh exports and employs almost 4 million people. For this large number of population occupational safety is a major concern. This study was conducted to assess the current occupational safety situation of RMG sector.

Methods The study was conducted in 10 RMG of Dhaka district since June to September 2014 by utilising qualitative and quantitative methods. 10 Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) and 390 face to face interviews using structured questioner were conducted with workers.

Results Qualitatively it was revealed that all 10 factories had workers’ welfare committee; they provided counselling on occupational safety and arranged training program on health safety issues. According to the participants there were supervisors in each working unit whose responsibility was to remind them about wearing musk, hand gloves, needle guard and uniform. From quantitative data it was found that 86% of total participants received counselling related to job during joining. Among them 81% received information on occupational safety, 54% on cleanliness and 27% on nutrition. Among all the participants 41% received training on fire safety, 21% general wellbeing and only 6% received on first aid. 88% of the participants said they saw different safety related posters including fire safety, personal protection equipment, hygiene and first aid.

Conclusions Occupational safety is now a major concern for readymade garments sector of Bangladesh. They emphases on counselling session during joining and some emergency training program but on much selected topics. Now they need to focus on situation base training and ensure the participation of every worker in this type of programme.