The impoverished South Asian nation has seen violent protests as garment workers mobilized to demand better wages since last month, leaving at least three workers dead and more than 70 factories looted or damaged, according to police.
This week, the Textile Sector Minimum Wage Committee proposed a 56.25 percent increase in the basic monthly salary of the sector’s four million workers, to 12,500 taka (104 euros), an amount that unions immediately rejected, deeming the proposal “ridiculous.”
On Thursday, confrontations took place between about 15,000 workers and the police on a highway. The demonstrators resorted to looting the large Tosuka factory and dozens of other factories.
Police Inspector Musharraf Hussain told Agence France-Presse: “Police have filed charges against 11,000 unidentified people following the attack on the Tosuka garment factory.
Bangladesh police have a habit of charging thousands of people – without naming them – following large protests and acts of political violence, a tactic critics say is a way to suppress dissent.
Police officials told Agence France-Presse that 150 factories closed their doors in the two main industrial cities of Ashulia and Ghazipur, north of the capital, Dhaka, amid fears of more strikes being organized with the start of the work week in Bangladesh on Saturday.
Sarwar Alam, police chief of the Ashulia region, told AFP, “Manufacturers resorted to Article 13/1 of the Labor Code and closed 130 factories for an indefinite period in Ashulia, under the pretext of organizing illegal strikes.”
The protests to demand wages pose a major challenge to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who has ruled the country with an iron fist since 2009, while facing great competition from the opposition as elections approach, scheduled before the end of January.
The 3,500 garment factories in Bangladesh provide about 85 percent of the country’s annual exports of $55 billion, and they export clothing to many major international brands. But working conditions are miserable for a large portion of the four million workers in this sector, the vast majority of whom are women.
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