District admin recommends new wage board [ Tritiyo Matra News ]

District admin recommends new wage board

Local January 03, 2017

The Dhaka district administration in a brief report on recent labour unrests at Ashulia recommended that the government should constitute a new wage board for apparel workers.
It also recommended that an executive magistrate should be engaged in keeping the law and order at Ashulia where the week-long labour unrest flared up to disrupt production of export oriented apparel factories badly.
On December 18, the district administration sent the brief report to the cabinet division suggesting continuous discussion between workers and factory owners on demands raised by the latter.
Dhaka deputy commissioner Mohammad Salah Uddin told New Age on Monday that they made the recommendations as pay hike was the main demand of the workers.
It was now up to the government to take further steps on the recommendation, he said.
The district administration would submit another report detailing the labour unrest, officials said.
The apparel workers demanded Tk 1,6000 as the minimum wage during protests.
Factory owners sacked about 1,600 workers and prosecuted about 1,500 workers to tame the labour unrest that caused closure of 85 factories for a week.
Although the agitating workers joined the works following assurance from the government to consider their demands, no visible step was yet taken by the cabinet division following the district administration report.
State minister for labour and employment Mujibul Haque said that the ministry got no recommendation from the cabinet division about the labour unrest.
‘I don’t know whether the DC office recommended constituting a wage board,’ he said, adding that such recommendation was not even discussed by the government high officials at any level.
Mujibul ruled out any possibility of increasing minimum wage for the workers of the ever-growing apparel sector right now.
He said that there was no scope for increasing the minimum wage for the apparel workers because of the labour law that stipulated that the wage would be reviewed in every five years.
In November 2013, the government increased minimum wage for the apparel workers to Tk 5,300 from previous Tk 3,000 fixed in July 2010. In 2006 the minimum wage for apparel workers was raised to Tk 1,662.50 from Tk 940 fixed in 1994.
Mujibul said that the factory owners could now only increase the minimum wage for the workers.
Although over 40 lakh workers, mostly women, contribute heavily over the years for turning the country as the second biggest apparel exporting country after China, the factory owners are less sympathised with the workers’ demands.
Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association president Siddiqur Rahman said that meeting the demand for increasing the minimum wage was not possible for the factory owners.
He termed the demand illogical and the protests as a conspiracy against the expanding garment sector.
The country ended the just concluded calendar year on a happy note mainly for the good performance of the exports that grew 6.9 per cent to $31.83 billion in the first 11 months of the year.
In the past week, Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association demanded higher cash incentive and devaluation of taka against the US dollar for achieving the country’s strategic export target of $60 billion, $20 billion higher than that of the neighbouring India, in 2021.
Bangladesh Garment Sramik Sanghati president Taslima Akter said that the labour unrests would not be solved permanently without pay hike.
The workers are facing severe difficulties in maintaining their families with their wages as the prices of all essentials and house rent have increased significantly, she said