Four in five RMG workers received March salary: Survey

Four in five workers in country’s readymade garment sector received their salary by mid-April for the work they performed in March, despite the economic pressures of the COVID-19 pandemic, data from a new survey show.

Specifically, 82 per cent of garment workers who worked in the last month were paid their salary as of mid-April, according to the survey.

Some of the workers who were paid did report salaries below Tk. 8,000, the legal minimum wage -- about 8 per cent in total. But most of those workers also reported working fewer hours than usual as many of the factories in Bangladesh were shut down on March 26, four working days before the end of the month.

The survey data also reveal that about three-quarters of workers were paid in cash, picking up their wages directly from the factory.

These data come from a survey conducted from April 17 to April 19 by researchers working for a local research institute in Bangladesh, South Asia Network of Economic Modeling (SANEM), and a US-based NGO, Microfinance Opportunities (MFO).

The researchers surveyed a total of 794 workers in the RMG sector in Bangladesh by telephone.

The workers are employed in factories spread across the five main industrial areas of Bangladesh, namely, Chattogram, Dhaka City, Gazipur, Narayanganj, and Savar.

Almost three-quarters of the workers are women. Though the sample over-represents women, it can be considered to be roughly representative of workers in the sector as a whole.