The latest plan by North American retailers including Gap Inc. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to enhance manufacturing plant safety in Bangladesh was criticized for not meeting the standards of a pact reached by a group mostly European retailers.

A fund worth more than $40 million was planned to execute the five-year program, which necessitates production facilities to be inspected within a year. The plan requires the results be made public, the North American businesses in a statement said yesterday. The Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety said it will set essential safety measures by October and refuse products from factories deemed hazardous.

In the North American agreement, the retailers can voluntarily promise funds above the $40 million mark so production facilities can make safety refurbishments. The European deal, by contrast, requires companies to ensure their factories have the capital to make necessary repairs. Among the retailers joing the deal  Inditex and Hennes & Mauritz, two of Europe's biggest clothing retailers.

"It's disappointing that Wal-Mart, Gap and other U.S. retailers have chosen to go their own way with a plan that appears to lack meaningful transparency and accountability, What's worse, their plan risks diluting the effectiveness of a stronger, global effort to improve worker safety," New York City Comptroller John C. Liu said in an statement regarding the deal.