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Demand For the Rights of Garments Workers Leaves One Dead in Bangladesh

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Odhikar, a member organisation of FORUM-ASIA, conducted a fact-finding mission to explore the garment sector in Bangladesh after protesting workers clashed with police, resulting in the death of one worker. The government must extend support to these workers and uphold human rights in the country.
Odhikar, a member organisation of FORUM-ASIA, conducted a fact-finding mission to explore the garment sector in Bangladesh after protesting workers clashed with police, resulting in the death of one worker. The government must extend support to these workers and uphold human rights in the country.

Garment workers face harsh realities in Bangladesh. The nation's top exporter employs and severely exploits 1.9 million workers. The majority of the workers are young women from rural areas whom have migrated to the urban centres in search of work and must frequently change of jobs because of wage arrears, lay-offs, ill health or harassment from bosses and "security guards".

A series of clashes between protesting garment workers and the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) and Police in Gazipur district took place on 21 May, 2007, as a result of unpaid salaries, which ultimately left one garment worker, Asma Akhter, aged 22, dead and many others wounded.

Odhikar, a premier human rights organisation in Bangladesh and member of FORUM-ASIA, conducted a fact finding mission on the incident and released a report on 3 July, 2007. The report revealed that workers of Fortuna Apparels, a ready-made garment factory in Gazipur district, were demanding their unpaid salaries and overtime bills for the months of March and April, 2007. The workers organised a demonstration and kept the Dhaka-Mymenshingh highway blocked for an hour on 19 May. A compromise meeting was held where it was decided that the dues would be paid by 22 May. A portion of the workers were paid on 20 May; the remaining workers were told they would be paid by 22 May. This delay caused agitation among the workers and at a certain point they attacked the factory and blockaded the highway. The police, RAB and members of the armed forces then tried to move the agitated workers off the highway, resulting in the death of one female garment worker.

Odhikar conducted several interviews with police and garment authorities, victims and witnesses. However, they have not been able to obtain the police report of the investigation, suggesting the case could remain unaddressed.

Starting as a non-traditional export item in late 1970s, manufactured garments evolved as the main export of Bangladesh by the early 1990s, contributing around three-fourths of the country’s current export earning. The export earning from this sector was only $1 million in 1978 and reached more than $5 billion in 2005. The availability of cheap labour was the main pillar behind the rapid flourishing of this sector. While the apparel sector employed 0.2 million people in 1985/86, it employed nearly 1.9 million people in 2004, comprising 40% of the manufacturing sector employment, 90% of which are female.1 To sustain this growth, Bangladesh needs to protect the rights of workers involved in this industry. Any maltreatment of these workers will call into question the government’s support of and commitment to human rights.

1 http://www.newsteps.info/workers_rights.php