Havoc in the garment industry and the 22-dollar a day question

The rumour mentioned above has been manifold. Some people are saying that it is the members of the student wing of BNP, who rampaged through one after another factory, wearing blue helmets, moving from one place to another by trucks. Law enforcers' inaction toward the blue helmets is the basis to this rumour. Only a few days back the law enforcers killed twenty-one people at Kansat, who were demanding redress to their grievances.

Why BNP should try to cause disorder in the country, while it is in power? Because it wants to foil the next general election and perpetuate its grip on power, as the rumour pays. The fact that the president suddenly fell grievously sick has poured fuel to this rumor.

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Another rumour is that, the Awami League supporters did the rampage. The main opposition party did it to show the government its strength of what havoc it will be able to cause to the country, if its demand as to the amendment of the caretaker government system is not fulfilled. A few days back Awami League supporters belonging Jubo Sangram Parisad, damaged so many vehicles on the street at Purana Paltan in the name of besieging PWD office; this event has made this rumour plausible to the people who dislike Awami League.

A big NGO, which is dead against the present government, has also been accused of orchestrating the attack on the garment factories by its own employees. NGOs are supposed to remain engaged in economic sector, but some NGOs have been getting involved in politics, which prompt ordinary citizens to believe this rumour.

As in the past, the conspiracy theory has also surfaced this time. Whenever an attack takes place on a garment factory, many people, even some responsible ministers, start talking of conspiracy against our garment industry by some countries, which are our rivals in this sector of the world trade. This time this conspiracy theory has gained some ground when we have seen many compliance factories have been rampaged through against which the workers have not got much to say.

The factory owners are saying their factory workers did not take part in the rampage. Eighty percent of the garment workers are female, and they have not seen taking part in the May 23 devastation. This side of the picture corroborates, to some extent, what the factory owners say. Our garment factory owners are lucky that the garment workers in Bangladesh are docile. They are being exploited so ruthlessly, still seldom they do show their resentment.

There is another rumour that the left romanticism was behind the havoc on May 23. These leftists wanted to give a good lesson to the factory owners for the gross injustice they have been doing to their workers. But have they thought of if garment business leaves Bangladesh, where will these fifteen hundred thousand plus female workers get jobs? What alternative these workers will be left with but starvation? Sri Lanka lost its garment industry due to unrest in that country. The milch cow, which gores, it is far better to cut off its horns than to slaughter it.

The state minister for home affairs said, they had the intelligence that something was going to happen in garment sector. If they knew it, why did not they take steps to prevent it? Perhaps the ministry was quite busy with looking for 'shontrus'.

Our intelligence departments are not intelligent enough to find out the real culprit(s) when a crime takes place. Two and half years gone and they have not yet been able to find out who conducted the bomb attack on the British High Commissioner in Shylhet. They have only acquired expertise in how to harass people who are not in the good book of the government, whichever party is in the power.

As usual, this time the foreign media did not miss the chance to use of what happened on Tuesday to portray the sad picture of Bangladesh. When Bangladesh achieves 6.5 percent annual GDP growth rate that is not a news item in western media.

The Guardian of the UK has reported on what happened in Bangladesh on May 23, quoting a garment worker that he earned twenty-two US dollar a month as his wage. That is less than a dollar a day. The people in the west very much like to say in a compassionate tone, whenever they get a chance, that the people in the developing countries earn less than a dollar a day. They like to use Atlas method of computing per capita income of the people of developing countries, instead of using Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) method for that purpose. The PPP method makes it clear that one-dollar in a developing country like Bangladesh is more than four dollars in the USA. Because what we can buy for one dollar in Bangladesh, one will need to pay at lest four dollars for that in the USA.

Certainly, twenty-two dollars, which is equivalent to almost hundred dollars in the USA is a good wage for a toiling people. The garment buyers from the developed countries are also to be blamed with the Bangladeshi garment factory owners for the low wages in our garment sector. A European or American buyer pays a Bangladeshi factory owner five and half dollars for a denim trousers. The same trousers is sold in the western market for not less than twenty-five dollars. What an enormous profit the buyers are making! And at the same time their compatriots, the ultimate buyers of the garments, are lamenting that the workers in developing countries earn less than a dollar a day.

We appreciate those buyers who compel the factory owners to go for compliant factories, and pay higher CM charges to those factory owners who comply with their demand.

Blaming people who do not belong to us will not solve our problem. It is the sacred duty of the government to make the garment owners to understand that the garment workers deserve more; they are to be treated humanely; they need leisure; they have personal lives. If they don't understand what is what then, unfortunately the untoward incidents may be happening in our garment sector now and then.

Faruque Hasan is a freelance contributor.