Bangladesh
Garment Workers Garment workers reject minimum wage, to hold protest rally on Friday
Dhaka, Nov 8: The wage board has announced that the minimum wage of garment workers will be Tk 12,500. The workers rejected this announcement. They called for reconsidering the demand of making the minimum wage Tk 25,000. The labour leaders have announced to hold a rally next Friday to protest against the reasonable increase in wages.
On Tuesday afternoon, General Secretary of Bangladesh Garment Workers Trade Union Center Jolly Talukder said, "We reject the announcement of increasing the wages of garment workers to Tk 12,500. We urge the government to reconsider our demand for wage hike."
He said, "Garments Sramik Andolan" platform has been formed with 11 organizations to demand increase in wages. On the initiative of this platform, we will hold a protest rally next Friday.
Mahbubur Rahman Ismail, president of Bangladesh Textile Garments Workers Federation, said that we have demanded Tk 25,000 wage from the government. The government has announced to make Tk 12,500. That is, it has announced to halve. We call for reconsideration of this claim.
Sirajul Islam Roni, president of Bangladesh National Garments Employees League, a government-owned labor organization, said the prime minister has supported the increase in wages for garment workers. Still we will try to increase it further.
Earlier, State Minister for Labor Mannujan Sufian announced that the minimum wage would be Tk 12,500 in the meeting room of the Ministry of Labor and Employment at the secretariat today (Tuesday) afternoon after the six round meeting of garment workers and owners. He said, we are announcing this on the instructions of the Prime Minister.
It is known that in the fifth meeting of the wage board on November 1, the workers' representative Sirajul Islam Roni proposed to raise the minimum wage to Tk 20,394. On the other hand, Siddiqur Rahman, the former president of BGMEA, proposed to raise the minimum wage to Tk 12,500. Based on his proposal, the government announced the new wages.
