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4 years ago

Garment workers pass difficult time

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The countrywide shutdown over the novel coronavirus has stirred up uncertainty in Bangladesh as garment workers spend their days in fear and anxiety.

“I can’t sleep. Don’t know what to do,” said an anxious Aleya, a garment worker who arrived from Nilphamari. She feels that jobs in the garment industry will dry up.

Even 10 days ago, Aleya and many other workers would walk to their workplaces in Rampura at 8 am and return home in the evening. Sometimes they would buy food and other daily necessities on their way back home.

With the garment factories now shut, they have no work and, like others, their movement is restricted. Other workers seen on the streets of Malibagh, Rampura and Badda on Tuesday shared the same fear.

Aleya has been working at a garment factory in Malibagh since arriving in Dhaka around three years ago. Her factory shut down on Mar 24.

“I can’t say what to do. We can’t return to the village, how long can you live inside a room? Who knows when the factory will open? And whether I will have my old work back, maybe not.”

“How many days can I survive without a job, how can I stay in Dhaka without earnings.”

Aleya’s husband Abdur Rouf is a rickshaw-puller – both live in a tin-roofed house in Badda, a crowded neighbourhood in Dhaka.

Abdur Rouf’s earnings over the last seven days are next to nothing. Aleya said he earned just Tk 86 from his full-day work on Monday as the number of passengers plummeted due to the shutdown.

Monowara Begum, a sweater factory worker in West Malibagh, said: “The export orders that our factory used to receive have stopped coming. We don’t know whether I will get back my job even if the factory reopens, because the owners had already spoken of dismissals.”

Monowara, a widow, is mother of two. Her family runs on her earnings from the factory. She lives in a small room in Malibagh, where several other garment workers live with her.

 

 

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