WOMEN employment in the readymade garments sector is still a dubious issue as they usually receive minimal wages and also have to face numerous difficulties at work. In the garments factory a female worker generally gets Tk 4,000 or less for working six days a week, almost 10 hours each day, from 8:00am to 6:00pm. It is hardly possible for anyone to run the family with this small amount of earnings.
We are relentlessly talking about women and labour rights but the reality has not changed in years. Political leaders talk about those rights. But these politicians, from both ruling and opposition parties, hardly ever translate their words into deeds, to ensure the minimal wage standards and rights of the women.
Nilufa, a 23-year-old RMG worker, says she gets around Tk 4,000 per month and the amount is not also paid on time every month. She has to struggle to run her family and in those months when the salary is late, life becomes horrible to bear. Sometimes she does overtime also to ease the financial burden. She helplessly adds that there are her mother and younger sister at home and after this long 10 hours of duty she fails to find any happiness returning home. She wishes the government would pass the laws and at the same time will enforce the existing laws to decrease working hours and hopes that someday she could get a satisfactory salary.
We can find many likes of Nilufa around the country. In this era of capitalism and market economy, a class of people is becoming richer and richer while majority of the people are becoming poorer and poorer. The ruling class hardly shows their sympathy to the causes of the helpless people. It is the time to make the garments sector more supportive to the workers. The owners must not forget that it is the enormous labour force which makes our readymade garments industry so successful, not the governments, not even the owners.
Rafik Alamgir
Chittagong