Plight of the RMG workers
While earning the least, they suffer the most!
Published : Tuesday, 07 May 2013
Shafiqul Alam
The size of the Bangladesh ready-made garment (RMG) industry is USD 13 billion and it is the second-largest source of foreign exchange earnings after remittances. This has happened due to the so-called competitive edge, i.e., cheap labour, but how cheap is that? Some workers earn even as low as Tk 3,000/4,000 per month, which is even much less compared to the workers in the neighbhouring countries like India and Pakistan. Hence, the competitive edge has been attained only by paying less to the workers, who work almost every day, and for long hours.
These people, being attracted by the urban glitter, come from their villages to try their luck in Dhaka. However, most of these people receive very little and find their lives very miserable. Once they join the garment industries, their dreams start to evaporate, leaving them in a state of dissatisfaction. Day by day, they realise that things are not as rosy as they had thought to be. These industries absorb all their energy but what they receive is in no way worth their contributions, which have led to the hefty profits of the owners and a steady growth of the country.
Let's come to a 2008 case. News of mass hysteria spread throughout the garment industries, where workers were reported to be hallucinating during long working shifts. Later on, doctors and psychiatrists attributed it to stress, anxiety, overwork and malnutrition. When one earns Tk. 3,000/4,000 per month, one can only live from hand to mouth, leading to a state of malnutrition in the long run and the situation will further deteriorate, if one works in long shifts under the specific objective of achieving the target set out by his/her supervisors.
On the other hand, Occupational Health & Safety (OHS) regulations are routinely ignored by the factory managements in the country, and are hardly monitored by the concerned department of the government. Factory fires break out on a regular basis. In most of the cases, they are smaller and as such, we, more often than not, remain in the dark. Many garment workers have the experience of fires at the workplaces; many have sustained injuries, lost friends and workmates to the accidents only due to the lack of implementation of OHS regulations. The Tazreen blaze tragedy alone has taken a toll of more than 100 people in last November.
The recent disaster, which is treated as the worst building collapse in the history of Bangladesh, has taken more than 600 lives with many still missing and the number of injured is also staggering. One will only ponder that the cost of supplying cheap wear is the lives of so many people. Sub-standard construction works followed by lack of monitoring by the responsible authorities could be the reasons behind such a catastrophe. It could be due to long spans without the required number of columns as per the design. Again, it could be due to uneven load distribution of the building violating the original design. However, had the building owner closed it for one day and asked one of the professors of Civil Engineering Department of BUET, a disaster of such a massive scale could have been easily avoided. Instead, a great disaster was invited.
In the aftermath of the Rana Plaza tragedy, issues like OHS and labour welfare, have again come to the centre of discussions. We have come to know that two women have given birth to two children and the pertinent question is that do the factory managements follow the government guidelines on maternity leave? These untimely births could be due to the frightening disaster, but still we can't avoid the question.
The Spectrum building collapse in 2005, Tazreen fire tragedy in the later part of 2012 and the recent Rana plaza collapse are indications of our apathy towards the OHS and welfare issues of the workers. We hardly can find in any of the cases that the factory owner has died, rather the workers, who have made the sector profitable by being deprived by the factory owners, lost their lives and suffered the most. These people earn even less than a rickshaw-puller and cannot manage a square meal a day. But what is worse, they suffer the most in case of a fire hazard, building collapse or any other man-made disasters.
Now, the time has come to completely restructure this sector in a way that OHS and workers' welfare remain central to the effort, and, moreover, there should be periodic monitoring on the government's part so that the country will not witness Rana Plaza-like tragedies anymore.
shafiqul0032@yahoo.com
While earning the least, they suffer the most!
Published : Tuesday, 07 May 2013
Shafiqul Alam
The size of the Bangladesh ready-made garment (RMG) industry is USD 13 billion and it is the second-largest source of foreign exchange earnings after remittances. This has happened due to the so-called competitive edge, i.e., cheap labour, but how cheap is that? Some workers earn even as low as Tk 3,000/4,000 per month, which is even much less compared to the workers in the neighbhouring countries like India and Pakistan. Hence, the competitive edge has been attained only by paying less to the workers, who work almost every day, and for long hours.
These people, being attracted by the urban glitter, come from their villages to try their luck in Dhaka. However, most of these people receive very little and find their lives very miserable. Once they join the garment industries, their dreams start to evaporate, leaving them in a state of dissatisfaction. Day by day, they realise that things are not as rosy as they had thought to be. These industries absorb all their energy but what they receive is in no way worth their contributions, which have led to the hefty profits of the owners and a steady growth of the country.
Let's come to a 2008 case. News of mass hysteria spread throughout the garment industries, where workers were reported to be hallucinating during long working shifts. Later on, doctors and psychiatrists attributed it to stress, anxiety, overwork and malnutrition. When one earns Tk. 3,000/4,000 per month, one can only live from hand to mouth, leading to a state of malnutrition in the long run and the situation will further deteriorate, if one works in long shifts under the specific objective of achieving the target set out by his/her supervisors.
On the other hand, Occupational Health & Safety (OHS) regulations are routinely ignored by the factory managements in the country, and are hardly monitored by the concerned department of the government. Factory fires break out on a regular basis. In most of the cases, they are smaller and as such, we, more often than not, remain in the dark. Many garment workers have the experience of fires at the workplaces; many have sustained injuries, lost friends and workmates to the accidents only due to the lack of implementation of OHS regulations. The Tazreen blaze tragedy alone has taken a toll of more than 100 people in last November.
The recent disaster, which is treated as the worst building collapse in the history of Bangladesh, has taken more than 600 lives with many still missing and the number of injured is also staggering. One will only ponder that the cost of supplying cheap wear is the lives of so many people. Sub-standard construction works followed by lack of monitoring by the responsible authorities could be the reasons behind such a catastrophe. It could be due to long spans without the required number of columns as per the design. Again, it could be due to uneven load distribution of the building violating the original design. However, had the building owner closed it for one day and asked one of the professors of Civil Engineering Department of BUET, a disaster of such a massive scale could have been easily avoided. Instead, a great disaster was invited.
In the aftermath of the Rana Plaza tragedy, issues like OHS and labour welfare, have again come to the centre of discussions. We have come to know that two women have given birth to two children and the pertinent question is that do the factory managements follow the government guidelines on maternity leave? These untimely births could be due to the frightening disaster, but still we can't avoid the question.
The Spectrum building collapse in 2005, Tazreen fire tragedy in the later part of 2012 and the recent Rana plaza collapse are indications of our apathy towards the OHS and welfare issues of the workers. We hardly can find in any of the cases that the factory owner has died, rather the workers, who have made the sector profitable by being deprived by the factory owners, lost their lives and suffered the most. These people earn even less than a rickshaw-puller and cannot manage a square meal a day. But what is worse, they suffer the most in case of a fire hazard, building collapse or any other man-made disasters.
Now, the time has come to completely restructure this sector in a way that OHS and workers' welfare remain central to the effort, and, moreover, there should be periodic monitoring on the government's part so that the country will not witness Rana Plaza-like tragedies anymore.
shafiqul0032@yahoo.com
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