Shocking revelations
THE collective conscience of our sweatshop owners for combating anti-compliant practices has not awakened. For the first time on Thursday night, an undercover Independent Television (ITV, a British television network), investigation reportage revealed a number of our RMG factories where verbal and physical abuse takes place, as workers are reduced to tears, slapped and kicked for not working fast enough. Another factory was filmed with its fire exits locked up during operational hours. Officials of another factory regularly manipulated vital health and safety checks.
The video footages captured by two Bangladeshi journalists on behalf of the ITV reveal that not all owners of our RMG sector are willing to change. In order to reveal the many embarrassing truths among a group of Dhaka-based factories, the ITV producers fitted local garment workers with secret cameras to record the conditions inside. We ask: is there an effective body to monitor the compliance related issues of the five thousand plus operating RMG factories scattered all over the country? What more can be done to make our factory owners more responsible?
The horrible deaths caused by the Rana Plaza collapse last year should have forced us to make an effort right across our garment trade to improve labour conditions and remove the dangers in working places. Sadly that's not happening. On top of that, exploitation of child labour has not stopped as we saw from the ITV video footage how girls as young as 13 were forced to work 11 hour-shifts.As we focus on the horrific revelations of the ITV's video footage another media report by the Human Rights Watch worries us. HRW interviewed some 47 workers in 21 factories in and around Dhaka. The workers claimed that some of the managers not only intimidated and mistreated employees involved in setting up unions, but also threatened to kill them. This followed as some union organisers were beaten up while others said they had lost their jobs or had been forced to resign. Factory owners sometimes used local gangsters to threaten or attack workers outside the workplace, including at their homes.
The government and the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) are yet to ensure compliance with the labour law, and sanction companies which abuse worker rights. In July 2013 Bangladesh ratified International Labour Organization (ILO) Conventions 87 and 98 on freedom of association and collective bargaining, and is required to protect the rights contained in them. In light of such happenings, establishment of independent trade unions to monitor and protect workers' rights will be not possible. We are upset.
The writer is Current Affairs Analyst, The Daily Star.
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