Garments workers demand factory based rationing
Garments workers have demanded immediate introduction of factory based rationing to enable them to cope with the run away food price hike.
The demand for rationing of rice, lentils, oil, potato, salt, powdered milk and other essential food items was raised by the National Garments Workers Federation at a press conference held at the Dhaka Reporters Unity in Dhaka yesterday.
The Federation also sought support of other workers' organisations on the issue.
Twenty-five lakh workers, majority of whom are women, are engaged in 45 hundred garments factories of the country, said Amirul Haque Amin, the general secretary of the Federation.
The workers said their low wages force them to lead a miserable life. Minimum wage for the garment workers was fixed, for the first time, at Tk 930 in 1994. As per the existing law, minimum wage for the garments workers is to be re-assessed in every three years, whereas the wage was not re-assessed again until October 2006. This time minimum wage was set at Tk 1662. Some of the garment factories are yet to implement this new minimum wage rate.
With prices of essential food items skyrocketing, the garment workers questioned, “How would we and our children cope with the dramatic price hike of essential food items and have a decent life with such wage rate?”
Export earnings from garments constitute seventy six percent of the country's total export earnings.
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