Plight of the poor

Beating of garments workers is not a new incident in our country, rather it's a single example among hundreds of unreported ones. Why they were beaten up mercilessly? What was their crime? Their crime, according to newspaper reports, was that they demanded arrears for three months. Their offence was that they demonstrated on the street after failing to get their just arrears through discussion? Is it a crime to demand daily wages?

If a garment worker is not paid her salary for three months, how could she survive in the city? How much a garment worker gets per day? A garment worker gets as low as Tk 30 per day, i.e. Tk 720 a month. And I think, no world famous economist or financial manager, other than the garment worker, would be able to prepare a monthly budget with Tk 720 for a family. Remember, unlike officers/employees of government or semi-government offices, the garments workers do not have any opportunity to get "extra" money from other sources. Where they reside, how they buy food, clothes and other essentials, or respond during indisposition, it's really a miraculous matter.

The photographs of the women workers with malnourished complexions and very ordinary sarees reflected their poverty. In fact, if we give a closer look at the passing by garment workers, we will find that most of them are malnourished. Their faces are depressed and gloomy. They walk a long way to reach their working places and go back by walking. Almost all the workers huddle in slums or slum-like residences. Under this circumstance, when a garment worker is not given his/her payment for three months, what could be his or her condition -- just think of that for a moment.

The garments sector has turned into the largest export earners in the country with annual turnover of over $5 billion (2003-04). But our manufacturers did not do anything innovative and fundamental in expansion of this sector. In real sense, we have been working as tailors. The owners of garment factories are the owners of tailoring houses and they are getting sewing charges after getting order and materials.

Bangladesh has become one of the hubs of garments manufacturing due to availability of very cheap labour. Labour is indeed cheap here. But the tragedy is that the factory owners cheat these cheap labourers and thereby make money. Nowhere in the world, are the workers as much exploited as in Bangladesh.

Is there any contribution of workers in earning the highest amount of foreign exchange from the sector? The workers are one of the parties -- like the factory owners and the government -- involved in sustaining this sector. However, their contribution is not only ignored but they are treated just like beggars. Except the workers, the other two parties are getting their due shares, sometimes extra benefit depriving the workers. As reported in The Daily Star, when the workers of the particular factory were being beaten up in the street, the owner was abroad -- maybe on a business trip or on a pleasure trip with his entire family. While his workers' blood is staining the city streets, he might be sleeping in a 5-star hotel or dining in a luxurious restaurant. What a contrast!

Our industrialists and businessmen are preached neither by religion nor by economic theories. Prophet Mohammad (SM) ordered to pay the wages before drying up the sweat of the workers. No economy -- capitalism or communism -- supports exploitation or cheating of the workers. However, our employers not only exploit and cheat their employees but also now and then harass them. And with the money being cheated from the workers, our manufacturers lead luxurious lives.

Most of the garment workers are from rural areas. Of course they have little or no work in the villages. But if they return back to their villages, they would survive as once they survived there. But what would happen to the garments industries? The owners and government always think they are the main players in the sector. They never consider the contribution of the workers. The workers are always at their mercy. Please, don't exploit them. They are not begging, they are giving their physical labour for their survival. A garment worker doesn't dream of a flat or a house in the city -- their only dream is to have a square meal and fulfil other basic needs.

When the garment workers were being beaten up or harassed, another marginalised section, the rickshawpullers, were being driven out from Dhaka city. Interestingly, all these happened during holy Ramadan, the month of restraint, and at a time when a famine-like situation (which is termed as monga) was prevailing in some northern districts.

Not only this year, almost every year in October/November, the city experienced an influx of migrants who come from northern districts failing to get any work in their areas. Most of the newcomers engage themselves in rickshaw pulling. They earn some extra money in two months, send this to their families and go back home at the end of November to catch harvesting season.

This year, their destiny was different. In the middle of the Ramadan, I saw a man begging for collecting money to return home. When I asked, he told me that he came to Dhaka from Roumari of Kurigram borrowing money from moneylenders in hoping to pull rickshaw. But after two days in the city, police seized his rickshaw from Shyamoli area, forcing him to out of job. Now, he had no money to return back home. Not only he, most of the monga-stricken migrants returned back home empty-handed this year, thanks to the city father and policy-makers for their bid to eliminate environment-friendly rickshaw from the city street.

The other day, another migrant rickshaw puller asked me: why the government does not impose ban on private cars as these occupy more road space and cause traffic jam in most of the rickshaw-free VIP streets? Again he answered his own question: the government will not do that or does not have the courage to do that because all of you are rich. You can maltreat the poor but you can't enrage the rich. I could say nothing in argument.

Nazrul Islam is a journalist and an environmentalist.