Spinning mill workers block highway in Gazipur for backpay

The workers of a spinning mill in Gazipur’s Kaliakoir have blocked the Dhaka-Tangail Highway in a demonstration for backpay.

The MSA Spinning Limited workers left the highway after three hours on Saturday evening when police baton-charged them and fired tear gas, reports bdnews24.com.

Rezaul Karim, a local trader who witnessed the incident, said the workers took to the highway linking Bangladesh’s northern districts with the rest of the country at Shafipur in the afternoon, blocking traffic in both directions.

The situation escalated as police tried to move the protesters back from the highway. The workers threw brick-bats at police, said Rezaul. Besides baton charge and teargas, police also used water cannons to disperse the demonstrators, he said.

One of the protesters, requesting not to be named, said the authorities closed the factory after trouble with workers over their colleague Md Amin Khan, 35, going missing from the factory premises on May 31.

The authorities promised to pay the workers their due salaries of two months and the salary and Eid bonus of the current month, but did not keep their word, the worker said.

Nitai Chandra Sarker, an inspector of the industrial police, said they tried to talk the workers out of the blockade, but the protesting workers attacked the law enforcers, leading them to teargas and club the demonstrators.

The factory authorities were not available for comments.