RMG workers take to street for arrears

Workers of a garment factory blocked a road in Gazipur yesterday morning, demanding their pending salaries and other dues ahead of Eid-ul-Azha.

Witnesses said they started demonstrating inside the factory of Style Craft Ltd around 8am. Getting no response from the management, they took to the street after two hours in Lakshmipur, 2-3km off Dhaka-Mymensingh highway.

Additional police were deployed in the area to avert tension.

Jalal Uddin Ahmed, additional superintendent of industrial police in Gazipur, said the workers left the spot around 7:15pm after they assured them of a meeting with the factory owner to meet their demand.

The demonstrators claimed that around 750 employees and 5,000 workers did not get full salaries for March and May of the current year, 50 percent salaries of March and August in 2020, and 35 percent of October and December in 2019 and 15 percent of November that year.

Besides, two years of Eid bonuses and increments of four years are also pending. They have been raising their demands for the last few days. The authorities set several dates for clearing those but postponed it every time, they said.

Somir Chandra Sutradhar, inspector of Gazipur Metropolitan Industrial Police, said such a demonstration for salaries has become a matter of month.

Factory In-charge Abu Bakkar Siddiqui, however, claimed that the authorities cleared all the payments except 11 days of April and full month's salaries of May and June this year.

On July 10, the authorities assured the workers of partially clearing the payments by July 15, which the workers did not accept, factory sources said.