Awaiting a new minimum wage
Garment workers walk to a factory. Their pay rise, the first in four years, will be effective from November 1. Photo: STAR
At 5:20pm, Fazila Akter, 25, was tidying her rented room in a slum in the city's North Begunbari area, already home from her work as a sewing machine operator in a Tejgaon Industrial area garment factory.
She lives near the factory, so she can return to the residence soon after her shift ends at 5pm. Tidying is simple, too, with scant furniture or clothes.
Fazila and her friend, Asma Akter, pay Tk 1,820 per month to share the eight-by-seven-foot room on the second floor of a sprawling three-storey house of bamboo and tin. They share a small, broken cot covered with an old kantha, as they cannot afford bed sheets. Because they have no shelves, their dresses are beside the cot; their utensils on the other side of the room.
The 10 families on the second floor share four gas burners just outside Fazila's room. Often they go to the factory without breakfast, because too many other tenants are queued to cook in the morning. They must leave the house before 8am to reach the factory in time.
The early trip home after work is a mixed blessing. With no overtime shifts, due to thin orders from the international buyers, Fazila receives only Tk 2,850 monthly. If there were overtime, she could earn up to Tk 5,000 per month. Fazila never went to school, but she stitches well.
Fazila says one dream makes her dire living conditions tolerable. "I have no other dream but to serve my parents and younger brother," she says.
Every month, Fazila sends money to her parents. She has been working for seven months. She had worked in factories before spending three years with her parents in her village home.
Fazila is just one of the industry's 3.5 million workers. Collectively, they contribute most of the value in the nearly $14-billion garment export, which earns the country 80 percent of its foreign currency.
On November 1 they will get a raise, the first in four years. The salaries of the nation's garment workers must meet the new minimum wage scales approved by the state -- though these are still by far the lowest among competing countries in the needle trade. The wage board increased the minimum salary of the garment workers at Tk 3,000 from its previous salary at Tk 1,662.50.
"I hope I will be able to live better, because my salary will also increase to some extent," Fazila says. “We need better housing.”
Thousands of garment workers live in the poorly built shacks of North Begunbari, putting their lives at risks. Fazila, Asma and other garment workers gather willingly to describe their daily lives. Few have a television set to pass their leisure time. Water-logging during the rainy season adds to their suffering because sanitation systems are crude.
Amirul Haque Amin, president of National Garment Workers Federation, says better housing for the workers was a basic demand during the latest labour unrest, before announcement of the new minimum wage on July 29.
"Along with an increase of the minimum wage, we had demanded the introduction of a full-scale rationing system, free health care and construction of dormitories for the garment workers during the latest movement," he says. Amin says the trade union leaders are still negotiating with business leaders for the construction of the dormitories for garment workers.
Abdus Salam Murshedy, president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, says the owners do not want to borrow from the housing fund of the Bangladesh Bank for the conditions it imposes. Only an institution, not an individual, can borrow money from it. But running a dormitory via an institution is difficult, he says.
"We asked the government to relax the rule so that the dormitories for the garment workers could be constructed as soon as possible, to improve the living conditions of the thousands of garment workers," Murshedy says.
Labour and Employment Minister Khandker Mosharraf Hossain says the government has a project with the World Bank to construct dormitories for garment workers, but only those of the workers of the Export Processing Zones (EPZs).
Others will wait for an indefinite future that may never come.
"At first, we will construct dormitories for the workers at every EPZ under the project, and we have also the plan to construct dormitories for the workers outside of the EPZs in future," the minister says.
Hossain says the government will help construct dormitories for workers outside of the EPZs after the BGMEA and Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BKMEA) can buy land.
"As a result, I cannot exactly say when the government will start construction of the dormitories for the workers outside of the EPZs," he says. “But we have a plan.”
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