Exposure to sweltering summer heat is not a new experience for the working people, especially those employed in agriculture, construction, rickshaw driving and pushcart-pulling, street vending, and so on, in Bangladesh. These people are not regular employees protected by service rules entitled to various benefits including paid leaves; they are daily wage-earning manual labourers. They dominate the country's labour market. But, of late, even these informal workers are finding it very hard to cope with the extreme heatwaves, a fallout from climate change. No wonder the extreme heat is sapping their energy and as such productivity. However, the impact of intense and prolonged heatwaves on the work and productivity of informal workers have been studied by 'adelphi global', a German think tank, which has recently published a report titled, 'Heat, Health and Increasing Cost of Living -- A Call for Action'. The report identified Bangladesh as one of the countries most vulnerable to the combined economic impacts of climate change-induced extreme heat.
According to the analysis, workers in Bangladesh's agriculture and construction sectors are projected to lose around 24 working days annually because of heat stress by 2030. Needless to say, the climate-induced heatwaves have been affecting informal employment in terms of increased health costs. The said study has also found that prolonged heatwaves trigger a financial double bind for Bangladesh's millions of informal workers as extreme temperature forces them to shorten shifts or miss work entirely. In that case, informal workers often resort to adjusting work hours to early mornings and late evenings, but widespread poverty severely limits their ability to adapt. Because almost all women in agriculture and a vast majority of labourers in construction sector operate informally without paid leave or income protection, every lost hour translates into lost food and wages.
Unsurprisingly, as the estimates go, in 2024, Bangladesh lost an estimated $24 billion in labour income and productivity due to extreme heat, which is equivalent to about 5.0 per cent of the country's GDP. These are natural factors causing such a colossal amount of income and productivity loss to the nation. Under the circumstances, the challenge before the policymakers and the public would be to adopt smart strategies, if not entirely ride out the vagaries of nature. Since it concerns working people living from day to day and unprotected by the government or society at large, there is need for extending governmental as well as social support to them so they can make up for the lost incomes due to extreme heat. Also, heat-related illnesses (dehydration, heat stroke) and exhausting chronic conditions drive poor workers and their households into deep financial hardship. Now with one of the heaviest personal healthcare burdens globally, that is, over 79 per cent of total health expenditures being paid directly out of pocket (OOP), its impact on the daily labourers and their households is not hard to understand. In fact, for the poorest households, these medical costs may come up to 35 per cent of their average income.
As part of its social safety net, the government would do well to cover the medical expenses of the informal workers or make the medical service entirely free for them. Piling on their woes, urban slum dwellers who have power connections, face higher electricity bills while simultaneously enduring dangerous indoor temperatures. But they have limited or no access to cooling. Against this backdrop, the country can no longer treat climate adaptation, public health and labour protection as separate issues. The government, on its part, needs to take a coordinated approach to place people at the centre of climate adaptation.
