APPAREL SECTORA
Govt asks owners to pay workers wages by Aug 6
The government on Sunday asked apparel factory owners to pay workers their wages and festival allowances by August 6 as the three-day holiday for Eid-ul-Fitr will begin on August 8.
‘All apparel factory owners have been asked to pay workers wages and other allowances by August 6 so that no one can make an issue out of this in the export-oriented sector,’ the home minister, Muhiuddin Khan Alamgir, said at a briefing after presiding over a meeting in the secretariat.
The government fears that labour unrest could begin in the apparel sector over non-payment or delay in payment before Eid, according to an official who attended the meeting.
An apparel factory at Buribazar in the Ashulia industrial belt, on the outskirts of the capital, was closed on Saturday for an indefinite period in the face of workers’ protests for various demands such as an increase in wages.
The home minister said that the Bangladesh Bank was requested to take measures so that commercial banks remain open on August 6, a public holiday on the occasion of Shab-e-Qadr, in the industrial belts in Dhaka and other places to facilitate worker’s payment before Eid.
The minister said that the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters’ Association would open a control room to monitor the situation in the apparel sector that earns around $20 billion in foreign exchange a year from exports.
Home and labour ministry officials will also help the garment exporters’ association in this regard, he added.
In reply to a question, Muhiuddin said that factory owners had assured him that they would pay wages along with festival allowance to the workers in time.
Representatives of the apparel factory owners, heads of law enforcement agencies and officials concerned attended, among others, the meeting.
The meeting recommended that the government should also announce holiday for August 7, the single working day before Eid holidays, so that the movement of home-bound people from the capital could be smooth, officials said.
There are around 5,000 apparel units mostly located in Dhaka and Chittagong with more than 40 lakh employees, mostly women, working in the sector.
-With New Age input
