Women Garments Workers - Nari jibon

The training of garment workers

There is no alternative to training to any types of work in order to train up the worker to fit in the job for which he/she has been employed. Most of the garment workers who work in many factories are not that skilled to do the job as required by the management; as a result in most cases the product produced are of inferior quality. Although there is demand of our garment products in the world, the demand would have been much higher if our products are produced with precision. To bring that precision the BGME must create training institution where for the workers whose 90% are young women, must be made mandatory to get admitted into the training institution for at least three months in their respective field for which they want to be employed. It is only then we can expect our products will be highly appreciated and ordered at a price higher than the prevailing price which means more foreign exchange for our country.

Female workers in a garments factor

Bangladesh is a small and poor country. It is an over populated country too. There are many people who live in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. Dhaka is a very crowded city. Most of the people of Bangladesh live in villages. Many people, especially the women,come to the cities to do a good job to earn money. Most of them work in garments factories.But garments workers’ life is very difficult………

Living place of garment workers

Garments workers’ life is very simple.They come mainly from poor family living in village so these workers are treated as lower class by the so-called higher class people of our society. Most of garments workers live in slums.

The woes of garment industry workers

The most of our garment workers are women. They work from morning till late night with minimum wages. These workers are to report to their duties on time otherwise they have to come under many queries or cut in wages. They are the workers on whom our country earns 76% of total foreign exchange. The management only looks into their interest; do they ever think about their minimum interest or their real problems? In many cases the answer is no. This is high time they start give proper attention to these groups of workers for the greater interest of this industry.

Garment workers are poorly-paid

Many garment workers are poorly-paid. They work in garments for a long time. They even work during the weekend.It is for these workers Bangladesh earns huge foreign currency .But they can’t get their due salary.The government should look into this matter seriously so that they can get their due wages and other facilities as these sectors accounts for 76% of our total foreign currency.

Factory Conditions Are Unsafe

Still, many of the women toil in unsafe working conditions. Garment factory owners, who know the women will accept low wages and long working hours even if it takes a toll on their health, have no incentive to improve conditions.

Nari Uddog Kendra (Centre for Women’s Initiatives), a women’s organization working with women employed in the garment factories, conducted a study of the health conditions of the women. It found that 66 percent complained that their health had deteriorated since they began work in the factories. One quarter of those reporting respiratory problems had been working in the factories for five years or more, and one fifth of those reporting symptoms of repetitive strain injuries had been working for six years or more. Long hours of work in one particular position, lack of access to clean toilet facilities and inadequate ventilation in factories were major factors in health problems.

Inhuman life of Garments women workers

Most of the workers came from the village, could not income paper money in the village. After arrived Dhaka/ cities they could get a chance, at the same time bound to work as without money city life impossible, can not continue ever one hour. The garments owners take this change as there is huge number worker available with competitive price. Although they know there are doing more work compare to there salary, but they can not say anything. They work 12-14 hours daily, even for whole night during shipment, despite this violate legislation. They walk down 6-7 km to reach the factory, again walk the same way to return home. They face the danger of insecurity and sexual harassment. They feel helpless in the machine-like environment of the City. They are compelled to seek shelter in the suburban slum area to maintain their lives with such a meagre income. In spite of such ordeal she dreams of freedom, leading a decent life. The opportunity of work has enabled her to dream. But if that dream is shattered? If they lose job? If the factory closes down? So they accept all exploitation without question.

Garments women workers are deprived from their rights

The women are deprived too in their new workplace. She does not know what are her rights at workplace. So she is deprived of her rightful wages, though she exhausts her all life-energy competing with the machine at the factory. They are deprived from other rights of workers and human rights, as they are discriminated as women. These workingwomen are the most deprived section among the deprived class, poorest of the poor.

The garment owner’s indifference towards its workers

The garments workers, who are mostly women, and earns 76% of total foreign exchange,are ill paid and lead substandard life. These workers genuine problems are often over looked by the employers even after their repeated demands to look into their genuine demands and create an atmosphere so that they can have their minimum wages and other facilities like medical allowance, festival bonuses and others, so that they can put their best efforts to produce quality products and compete with countries like China and India .Mentionable that export of Bangladesh garments products remains still strong, while many countries have gone down. Unfortunately enough that the owners of many garment factories are yet to wake up to their call calling for unnecessary chaotic condition in the factory which leads to layoff of the factory, destruction of the factory and loss of lives of many who sometimes becomes unruly incurring huge loss of money. To sustain the momentum gained by our garment industries the owners of the garment factories must think seriously and meet their demands which are very negligible to what they themselves earn. And save the industry for the greater interest of the country.

The loss of property and lives from agitation

Due to obstinacy and obduracy of the garment owners, the garment workers out of rage come out of the factory and take to the street causing damages to the public and private vehicles, shopping mall and block the roads for hours together causing inhuman suffering to the general public. To make the situation worst some cadres of political parties participate in the destruction activities forcing the law enforcers to intervene. The police sometime have to open fire when situation goes beyond control causing loss of valuable lives. The government and garment owners must sit immediately and find some amicable settlement so that this untoward incident does not repeat again and save the industry from total ruination.

The impact of global economic recession in our RMG industry

The present status of our RMG industry shown in bar chart

The ongoing global economic crisis has been the cause of major concern of export dependent economies. It has been observed major industrial countries is experiencing sharp fall in export demand .Even high exporting countries like China and India recorded sharp decline in export in last few months. Other high performing countries like Indonesia, Malaysia.Phillipine and Thailand are also suffering badly due to the ongoing crisis. On the contrary export from our country so far has remained quite strong. Knitting and woven garment exports have increased by 41% and 36% respectively. In July-December period over the corresponding period last year. This is attributable primarily to low-end textiles product, which has been least affected by the crisis. And they will continue to import this low end product during the crisis period. From Bangladesh.

The expert of FOREIGN TRADE INSTITUTE differs in opinion and they rightly points out that garment sector is in deep trouble and the demands for these products will drastically will fall down when income will start improving. The BGMEA must look into it thoroughly and start thinking from now on without wasting time regarding how to tackle the situation and keep our products export on track which accounts for 76& of our foreign exchange.

The unwholesome environment and lack of safety measures of garment workers

Most of the garment factories in our country lack the basic amenities where our garment workers sweat their brows from morning to evening to earn our countries the major portion of our foreign exchange. Anybody visiting the factory the first impression he or she will have that these workers are in a roost. Improper ventilation, stuffy situation, filthy rooms are the characteristics of the majority of our factories. The owners profit are the first priority and this attitude has gone to such an extent that they do not care about their lives. How many of our factories have facilities to combat any hazard like fire? Are these workers properly trained to face the situation in the event of such hazard and what to do instead of getting panicked? There has been lot of such cases in recent years which resulted in lot of deaths of these workers. Countries like China, Italy give first priority of workers comfort and the safety so that they can get better out of this workers.in our countries most the workers get sick. So the time has come to improve their working environment and their safety without further delay if we are to expect uninterrupted

Some garment workers live in hostel

The garment workers are come from village that’s why they don’t have any house their own in the city. They live in slum or some time they live in hostel, especially who don’t have any relatives in the city. In the hostel one girl share her room with other two or three girl. There is two or three bed inside the hostel room. Those beds make the room congested. But still they have to stay here because they don’t have any other option for staying. The garment worker who stay in the hostel actually they prefer hostel because of safety. I heard that some time they fight with each other for some reason and one of them leave the hostel. Actually the main reason of fighting between the hostel girl is room sharing. In my point of view, I think it is really painful to share your room with unknown person.

RMG factories and the accommodation facilities

As most of the garment workers come of the poor family and comes from the remote areas and they have to attend to the duties on time, these workers have to hire a room near the factory where four to five huddle in a room and spend life in sub human condition. For four to five workers there is one common latrine and a kitchen for which they have to pay from Tk=2000 to Tk=2500/-.They share this amount among themselves to minimize the accommodation expense. One cannot believe their eyes in what horrible condition they have to pass out their time after almost whole day of hard work in the factory. After laborious job they come into their roost, cook their food and have their dinner or lunch in unhygienic floor or bed and sleep where they take their food. They share the single bed or sleep on the floor. The owners of these factories must not treat the workers as animals. The owners of these factories who drive the most luxurious car and live in most luxurious house do ever think that these are the workers who have made their living so juicy. Will these selfish owners ever think of these workers of their better living for the sake of humanity by providing better accommodation for these workers in addition to providing with the job.

Garment workers entertainment time

Garment workers are work very hard. They work for a long time. 90% of garment workers are women so they don’t get the chance of going market or Movie Theater to watch their favorite movie for their entertainment after their work or at night. Because it is not safe for a women that she go to market or Movie Theater alone at night. And of course after a long time work they get tired so they don’t have that energy to go anywhere for their entertainment. So in the weekend especially the girls who live in the hostel they get the opportunity to watch a movie from 3 to 6 pm on BTV. Because in the hostel there is a television for all hostel girls. The garment workers actually not only the garment workers the village people love to watch Bangla movies. I heard that maximum of the hostel girls sit together in the television room and enjoy the movie on weekend. I think this is a really good way of garment workers entertainment.

Power crisis and our garment industries

Bangladesh is suffering from acute power crisis since a quite long time without any respite. The present new Government which has put this problem in the priority list has so far not given proper direction as to what steps it has taken to mitigate the crisis. The crisis has deepened to such an extent that general people started to think that we should start practice of leading life of medieval ages. One understands what role power plays in making of a nation. The major concern that is going through the minds of general people is, will we be able to keep our industries alive specially the Garment industries which brings big chunk of our foreign currency? So far nothing appreciable has been done – except meeting and hope that power will be supplied uninterrupted in next three to four years. If this state of power supply goes on for one to two years imagine what will be the fate of many garment factories. Production will come down drastically: it will start loosing the international market and lastly and most importantly the undesirable cut in workers which will be a economic disaster for the nation. The crisis can be averted if Government start thinking without further delay of importing power from neighboring countries which are self sufficient in energy .and installing burger mounted power plant on short term basis as there is uncertainty of availability of gas on which the power plant of our country depends. There has been a lot of negligence in this sector. People don’t want to see any further negligence. The Government must put in their best efforts to solve this problem as soon as possible before it gets too late to incur the wrath of the general public and the RMG workers especially which may not be good taste for the Government.

Lack of standard machine in our RMG industries

Anybody visiting any of our garment factories, the first thing they will encounter is the machine-the sewing machine, knitting machine and other machineries-with help of which our workers produce readymade garment products from which our country earns a major chunk of foreign currencies. Has anybody ever gone deep into the facts that the garment products which are being produced with the help of the machineries are in what state and what special efforts and the time our workers have to give to make it worthy of making it of exportable standard. It is often seen in many factories the workers are using their hand instead of using the machine, stitching, fixing buttons, which results in poor quality and defects of our readymade garment products. In most of the factories there is theft cases of parts of machines and these are replaced with low quality parts or made from lathe machine to keep the machine operational. As such the products which would have been produced with a great precision and less time, reducing extra burden on our garment workers has a great negative impact on our RMG industries. To achieve better output the first thing that the owners have to ensure is to provide flawless machineries. The owner instead of going harsh against the workers must try to find out the real causes of low quality products and time wastage factors if they really want to bring qualitative changes in their products.

Bangladeshi garment products

Since the creation of Bangladesh one sector in which it has made appreciable achievement is its garment industry. Any Bangladeshi can boast of its garment products. It not only caters to our requirements but also our products are exported to different countries which earn about 76% of the total foreign currency it earns. Our products are highly acclaimed by the foreigners for its qualities and verities. As our products are produced at cheaper rate in comparison to other exporting countries the foreign byres evince a lot of interest in our products and invest quite remarkably than any other countries. It is very interesting to see and one can understand from the fact that foreigners visiting our countries are found loitering specially around our Bangabazar to buy the garment products. These are the products are directly brought from the factories and are sold at cheap rate. Here both our local people and foreigners are usually seen buying the garment products produced locally.

It is very unfortunate that some unscrupulous business man change the brand of the products and want to sell the products in the name of product of foreign made for higher price, which not only destroys the goodwill of our garment industries but also put the export of our garment products at risk.

To them these streets belong

“When two homeless people pass each other on the street, they may share a look, and in that moment, without speaking, they have knowledge of each others’ lives.” -Leory Skalstad, homeless photographer.
It’s in those streets of the dawn in Chittagong that I found this homeless man sleeping on the footpath, covered in polyester sacks. I never stayed on for this man to wake up, but I am sure he had a story to tell.
Sadly enough, it’s people like him who represent a large proportion of the population of Bangladesh-people who crowd the streets of our cities, people who we hardly notice unless their begging starts to feel like harassment, the homeless, the slum dogs. Their life stories are the true representation of life in Bangladesh. They have embraced the streets for their home, and the street has given them shelter. They belong to these streets, and to them these streets belong.

World Cyber Games - Battle for Cyber Supremacy

WORLD Cyber Games ( WCG) is the world cup for gamers around the world, a chance to truly see just how good you are with keyboard and mouse against other players. For the last couple of years, F1 Management Limited, an event management company has been organizing the National Round in Bangladesh, selecting the winners who will face the players from all over the globe. This year for the first time Bangladesh has been invited in the WCG 2009 Asian Championship.

The Asian Championship of WCG will be held in Singapore on the first week of July, where all the past Asian Championships has been held, along with the WCG Grand Finals back in 2005. The participating countries include Bangladesh, Australia, China, Japan, India, South Korea, Thailand and New Zealand among others. This event is more than just a gathering of thousands of gamers around the world -- it's the benchmark of the Asian gaming world. This is where the high scores and records are set and broken. The event finals will be held from 3rd to 5th July and the official games of this year are DoTA (Defense of The Ancients), a modified version of Warcraft III Frozen Throne, FIFA '09 and Guitar Hero: World Tour.

In order to select the best gamers to represent Bangladesh in the Asian Championship, a qualifying round was held at the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (Dhanmondi Campus) from 11th to 13th June. It was organized by F1 Management Limited in association with Department of Computer Science and Engineering of the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh. The registration process of the event was held between 7th to 9th June. More than 500 gamers took part in this three-day prestigious gaming event.

Thirty computer stations were networked for the gaming contest for FIFA '09, and twelve other computers for DoTA. Guitar Hero was played on a giant projector screen through a XBOX 360 console and two console guitars. The winners of these games will be representing Bangladesh in the Asian finals in Singapore.

The preparation for this grand event started almost a month early, with careful planning out of the details for the program. The main action started on the morning of 7th June, with members of F1 setting up the registration booth, backed up by the enthusiastic student volunteers of ULAB. From 7th to 9th June, the organizers literally shed their sweat and tears as they struggled to meet the overwhelming response from the crowd. Even after closing down the registration, requests kept pouring in from parents to let their children register. On the 10th, the computer stations were brought in and the organizers started setting them up as fast as they could, with the main job being setting up the networking between the PCs. For FIFA the PCs were connected by a simple PC to PC LAN wire whereas for DoTA, which is a 5v5 team game, they had to use a hub switch to connect 12 PCs together. After that a thorough test was run on every PC to ensure they were in fine working condition with all the associated equipments. However, the organizers had no time to breathe as they had to hold a mock tournament on the 10th in order to train and prepare the referees accurately for the tournament starting the next day. The games were simulated over and over by the organizers emphasizing on the rules and how they were broken. The work went on till 11 almost every night after which the organizers, namely Basit, Tarif, Me and Nasir stayed over at Nasir's place near Dhanmondi.

On the big day, the competition began with the participants collecting their IDs and t-shirt uniforms. As the competition rushed on at full steam through the day, Hasib, our techie and Meraj, our head referee had barely a second to catch their breath, managing the gamers and the PCs.

On the second day it was pretty much the same picture, except the ID collection booth was shut down and a XBOX 360 console was brought onstage so that anyone who wanted to practice and register for Guitar Hero could give it a try. With a huge projector screen and two large speakers at both sides of the room at full blast, it was not long before everyone simply forgot about the other games and gathered in front of the stage, where two competitors would take it in turns to play the guitars and turn the mass into a mini concert, filled with head banging, crowds singing along, and the guitarists making wild moves!

On the final day, the final showdown occurred in each of the games, and they were displayed in the giant projector screen, where the crowds actually turned the place into a stadium, and took sides to cheer for not only the gamers, but the teams they were playing with as well! The heat of the crowd was turned up a few notches with the guitar hero finals, where the two finalists had an epic showdown with neither of the players giving the other an inch.

Afterwards, there was a grand closing ceremony where among many were present Prof. M. Lutfar Rahman (Dhaka University), and from ULAB D. Jahirul Haque, Prof. Abdul Mannan and Prof. Syed Akhter Hossain(Head of CSE Dept.) were present. They distributed the medals amongst the winners and handed over our national flag to them, which will represent Bangladesh in the Final round in Singapore. The winners of the competition were:

Guitar Hero
1st: Fahad Bin Jafar
2nd: Iftekharul Islam
3rd: Ishtehar Hossain

DoTA
1st: Xtreme Lungis\Shadow Play
1.Md Shajjadur Rahman
2.Ashiqur Rahman Moin Sami
3. Faisal Jashim Uddin
4. Md. Mohiuddin Sajol
5. Saadman Sakib Rahman

2nd: Team Bangladesh
1. Baadhan Saha
2. Riyasat al Jamil
3. S.M. Rezaur Rahman
4. Rafiqul Islam Joy
5. Amit Richard

3rd: Xtreme Lungis\Xtreme Lungis
1. Kazi Newaj Ibne Mahtab
2. Sharif Nazir
3. Tushar Khan
4. Imran Meah
5. Rubaiyat Islam

FIFA '09:
1st: Md. Aminur Rashid Asif
2nd: Atif Al Rashid
3rd: Arafat Jani

Promised digital Bangladesh and the young generation

The honeymoon period for the newly installed Government led by Awami League is yet to over. The landslide victory of Awami League in the last election has given the new government of Sheikh Hasina an enormous task of meeting people’s aspirations. Different analyses of the electoral results have revealed that the young generation who consist of more than one third of the voters had indeed brought this overwhelming victory for AL. With many other reasons, implicitly it can be inferred that voters of this generation while exercising their franchise considered party manifestos seriously. Presumably the visionary approach of AL’s manifesto, entitled ‘a charter for change’ might have allured the young voters much, especially its ‘Vision 2021′ which envisions a ‘digital Bangladesh’.

Let us now explore the buzzword digital Bangladesh. What does it really mean? Moving towards digital Bangladesh does not imply that the urban young groups of the country will be more sophisticated consumers of high-tech devices like computers, digital cameras, latest model mobile sets or camcorders etc. based on high-speed Internet infrastructure and promote the dejuice culture. Rather discarding this superficial notion, we need to consider the term ‘digital Bangladesh’ objectively.

Broadly speaking, a digital society ensures an ICT driven knowledge-based society where information will be readily available on line and where all possible tasks of the government, semi-government and also private spheres will be processed using the state of the art technology. So, a digital Bangladesh must guarantee efficient and effective use of modern ICT in all spheres of the society with a view to establishing good governance. In other word, making Bangladesh a digital one, we have to establish technology driven e-governance, e-commerce, e-production, e-agriculture, e-health etc. in the society emphasizing the overall development of the common people, the major stakeholders of the country.

Due to globalization, more specifically due to booming of ICT like most of the countries on the globe, Bangladesh has already been connected with the outside world. Yet in the field of ICT, our only grand success lies in Mobile telecommunication which has brought an abrupt change in telecommunication scenario of the country. However, in the other spheres of ICT, our achievement is very insignificant and we are still far away from transforming ourselves into a knowledge-based society.

Building strong ICT infrastructure is the pre-requisite for making Bangladesh a digital one. For this, we need to focus on the following relevant issues assessing the harsh reality that hinders our development in this context.

a) Power deficit: Latest statistics reveal that Bangladesh faces a power deficit of up to 2000 MW against a demand of 5000 MW daily. It may be noted that for proper ICT development an uninterrupted power supply is a must.

b) Network infrastructure: Outside Dhaka, at present a few computer network infrastructures have been developed so far. Apart from some educational institutes outside Dhaka, observation finds that most of the LAN setups are Dhaka centric. This observation reveals the reality of the digital gap even within the country.

c) Use of Internet: For the ICT development Internet users of the country must be increased. In this case our position is the worst one among the South Asian countries. The latest statistics (ITU, 2007) revealed that Internet penetration in our country is only 0.3%. Whereas, in Pakistan and India, it is 7.3% and 5.3% respectively.

d) Under sea submarine cable: Since 2006, Bangladesh has been connected to worldwide Internet Super High Way through an under sea submarine cable. But this single submarine cable frequently faces disruption resulting in slow bandwidth.

e) Network Readiness: Networked Readiness Index (NRI), developed by the University of Harvard, measures the propensity for countries to exploit the opportunities offered by information and communications technology. The NRI seeks to better comprehend the impact of ICT on the competitiveness of nations. The NRI is a composite of three components: the environment for ICT offered by a given country or community, the readiness of the community’s key stakeholders (individuals, businesses, and governments) to use ICT, and finally the usage of ICT amongst these stakeholders. Unfortunately, the latest survey (2006-7) revealed that Bangladesh’s NRI ranking is one of the lowest among the Asian countries.

f) Use of open source software: Many countries (e.g. France and Malaysia) have started to use open source software in ICT development projects for cost effectiveness. Unfortunately, in our ICT development domain the culture of using open source has not yet been introduced.

g) English literacy rate: From different sources, it has been learnt that, English literacy rate in Bangladesh is less than one percent. Whereas, English literacy rates in India and Pakistan are 60% and 20% respectively. There is a strong correlation between English literacy and ICT development in the present context of globalization. In the arena of ICT English has become the Lingua-Franca. On the other hand, we have not localized Bengali in the domain of computing. Hence, English literacy is a must for our ICT development. Unfortunately, in this case our position is the worst in the sub-continent.

Though the above accounts seem to be frustrating one, these can be easily overcome within a reasonable span of time if we can establish good governance in the country. Since independence, Bangladesh has been critically suffering from poor governance. Lack of vision, corruption, lack of transparency, weak coordination, undemocratic decision making were the salient features of our past governments. These can also be marked as the major barrier to the overall progress of Bangladesh. However, the newly installed government which has called for changes, hopefully, will establish much expected good governance to keep up with people’s aspiration.

For making a digital Bangladesh by 2021, the government must address the above stated issues effectively and efficiently in transparent manners. In many cases we need to reformulate our national policy (e.g. education policy, ICT policy) in accordance with the Millennium Development Goals. In reformulating the ICT policy, we will need to take a pragmatic and visionary approach so that it can curb the prevailing digital gap in the society. Moreover, the journey towards a digital Bangladesh needs the incorporation of the technologically solvent innovative younger generation. If the leaders of our country objectively guide this generation, they can do wonder for the nation. After all, the young generation always looks forward and they can help bring about positive changes in the society.