Minimum wage for garment sector by 1st week of Oct
By BSS, Dhaka
Thu, 24 Aug 2014, 10:44:00
The New Nation, Bangladesh
The long awaiting national minimum wage structure as well as the minimum wage for the Ready Made Garments (RMG) sector are expected to be declared by the first week of October.
Labour and Employment secretary Syed Shujauddin Ahmed on Thursday said this while speaking at a roundtable on ‘National Minimum Wage: Poverty Reduction and Social Justices for Workers’ here
Shujauddin said the declaration of the minimum wage would not bring any benefit of the labours unless it is implemented properly by the owners of the organizations.
The roundtable was organized by Bangladesh Institute of Labour Studies (BILS) under its national campaign on safety net for worker project at the CIRDAP auditorium here.
Acting chairman, BILS and Whip of the Jatiya Sangshad Ashraf Hossain, MP, chaired the roundtable while the editor of the ‘Daily Arthonity’ Zahiduzzaman Faruque moderated the discussion.
Secretary general of BILS Nazrul Islam Khan deliberated the welcome speech and member-secretary of Unnayan Onneshan Jakir Hossain presented the keynote paper.
Member of Minimum Wage Board (MWB)Zafrul Hasan, President of Bangladesh Jatiya Sramik Jote Shirin Akhter, professor of economics of Dhaka University Dr, Nasreen Khundker, Executive Director of SUPRO Rezaul Karim Chowdhury, Executive Director of Nari Uddug Kendra Masuda Khatun Shefali and coordinator of SKOP Dr. Wazedul Islam Khan also participated in the discussion.
Zafrul said, so far, the MWB has brought only 25 percent of the labour from 38 sectors of the country’s labour force under the minimum wage but 75 percent are still out of any wage structure.
The upcoming minimum wage would cover almost all sectors of the labour force except few sectors including agriculture and domestic labours.
The government declared Taka 1250 as the minimum wage on July 8 in 2001 last though that could not be implemented due to strong resistance of the owners community.
After that the government send the declared minimum wage to the MWB for re-evaluating the amount of minimum wage, as taka 1250 minimum wage is unlikely to meet the workers’ basic demand.
Later, Zafrul told BSS that the upcoming minimum wage is expected to be around Taka 1500, which was 1250 in the last minimum wage.
Jakir Hossain showed in his keynote paper that due to the money inflation and price hike of the commodities the minimum wage should be taka 4286 to meet the basic demand of the labours.
Shirin urged all political parties to take effective steps by making an integrated effort with strong political commitment to implement the accurate minimum wage of the labour forces.
Shefali demanded to enact law to force the owners to implement the minimum wage structure.
© Copyright 2003 by The New Nation
