Editorial
Garment workers' edgy nerves costing heavily
Get to the bottom, provide internal trouble-shooting mechanisms
THE eruption of violence for two consecutive days at Ashulia centring around workers' demonstrations and police action to bring order, has proved to be quite unsettling. Especially because it comes after a relative lull in violence in the sector. Of course, there have been occasional troubles, but none so serious and rampant in nature as really happened on Saturday and Sunday.
The recurrence of violence has exacted a heavy toll. Two workers have died, one in firing by Ansar on Saturday which led to clashes between the police and the worker on Sunday taking another worker's life. As many as 150 were injured, including workers, policemen and journalists, with 30 of them critically. In the large-scale disturbances, 15 factories were ransacked and 50 vehicles damaged, to say nothing of the four-hour-long barricade to the traffic put up by the agitators on the Tangail highway bringing considerable loss to the economy.
So the latest incidence of violence in the garments sector should cause concern not just in the government and the industry but among the citizenry as well. At a time when the garments industry is facing the twin challenges of falling export demand and prices brought on by global recession, worker-management relationship can not afford any chink. The industry should not allow itself to be damaged by agitated workers who seemingly get worked up or are incited to violence taking advantage of mishandling of minor issues. Since giving the worker a sack is a sensitive matter it should be for a composite employer-employee committee to do that so as to avert any misunderstanding or impulsive reaction. Besides, the demand for higher wages persist in some form or the other which is not surprising, given the increasing costs of living. The management should not only take a sympathetic view of the matter but be seen to be doing it. The promised support in kind like rationing at fair price should be in place.
As for the Saturday's firing incident which triggered Sunday's violence it must be fully gone into and the responsibility for it fixed with a focus on who actually ordered the Ansar to fire. Also the circumstances leading up to the second death and infliction of injuries on workers, policemen and journalists need to be probed. And the reports should be actually used. Only dispassionate appraisal of untoward incidents and corrective measures devised accordingly can help us wriggle out of the cycle of violence we willy-nilly sleep-walk into.
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