We are constrained to comment on the ongoing violence in the garments sector, for the second day in a row, as we are aghast at the scale of violence and lawlessness breaking out even after months since the resolution of the minimum salary issue. This was to take effect in November, 2010.
Aside from the damage wrought on Friday and Saturday to RMG factories in Chittagong and Dhaka with 50 vehicles vandalised, the Sunday's toll is simply devastating: four persons were killed and 90 others including 56 policemen and three journalists were injured in and around Chittagong Export Processing Zone (CEPZ). Eleven garment factories and 20 roadside buildings were damaged as five vehicles put ablaze with 90 of them caught up in a car-bashing spree with panic spreading all around. This is far from auspicious at any time, more so now when new replacement market opportunities are unfolding.
The trouble originated as usual in an apparently minor cause centring around payment Tk 250 as food allowance. The Youngone factory chief in Chittagong talking of the resulting flare-up observed, 'outsiders had provoked the agitation by showing bloodstained papers and spreading rumours of workers' death'. The Youngone chief explained that since the food allowance in part had been already given at the time of rice price hike, the decision to factor in Tk 250 as food allowance was temporarily withheld. There appears to have been some miscommunication which was taken advantage of by trouble-mongers.
Indeed, when the workers are in a state of anticipation of a salary raise, all details including any logical variation relating to it would have to be communicated to them, for which there should be auto-reactive mechanisms within managements.
Of course, given the pattern of origin, deliberate incitement, contagion effect and embroilment, one is likely to see 'outsider hands' being at play behind the bush-fire like engulfing of a large segment of the garment sector. But there are admittedly issues of worker representation, communication between the worker and management and continuing, informative and mutually receptive engagement between floor and management levels. What about the industrial police that seemed in the works? The garment sector being highly competitive, internally and externally, attempts at meddling by vested quarters cannot be ruled out.
From the BGMEA to the law enforcement authorities to the ministers there have been oft-repeated pointers to the 'outsiders' handiwork'. While they never tire of it, we the audience are fatigued by such allegations simply because despite all the refrain for a long time, there is no public knowledge about who the outsiders are! The clarion call we would like to issue is for the government to identify the outsiders, expose them and bring them to justice.