Thousands protest low pay as Bangladesh textile unrest enters third week
DHAKA (AFP) - Protests over low wages continued into a third week as thousands of Bangladesh textile workers staged fresh walkouts, while the government closed down a key export zone near Dhaka after factories were vandalised.
Police said some 10,000 workers took to the streets in the industrial town of Ashulia, north of Dhaka, to demand higher wages, increased overtime pay and a mandatory weekly holiday.
"They were demonstrating peacefully and at the same time negotiating with the owners," police sub-inspector Sakhawat Hossain, duty officer of Ashulia police station, told AFP on Sunday.
Ashulia's Dhaka Export Processing Zone (DEZ), one of seven economic zones where foreign investors enjoy special tax benefits, had been closed after rioting on Saturday, the authorities announced.
Foreign investors said in a combined statement 38 factories were attacked and vandalised and foreign managers were assaulted in the riots.
"The commerce minister today (Sunday) held meeting with the DEPZ investors. He has assured them of bringing normalcy to the zone within a week," Nazma Binte Alamgir, press manager of the Bangladesh Export Processing Zones Authority (BEPZA), told AFP.
There are 92 foreign and local owned industries in the DEPZ, which employ over 75,000 workers and export garments worth 300 million dollars a year.
In a statement, Bangladesh's commerce and labour ministers said the government was respectful of the reasonable demands of the workers.
"But destruction of mills and factories in the name of workers movement is not acceptable," the ministers said.
"If the factories are closed, the country will suffer a huge economic loss and lakhs (hundreds of thousands) of workers will lose their jobs," they added.
The ministers were to meet the union leaders later Sunday, Alamgir said.
The protests began May 20 in Sripur, some 60 kilometre (40 miles) from Dhaka, and spread to the capital and its adjoining industrial towns.
At least two workers were killed and scores injured after security officers shot at the rioting workers.
Bangladesh has more than 4,200 garment factories. The industry accounts for more than three-quarters of the country's 9.3-billion-dollar export earnings and employs 40 percent of Bangladesh's industrial workers.
Business has been booming since the end of global textile quotas but the sector is notorious for shabby safety standards and low wages.
06/04/2006 07:48