State Minister for Labour Md Mujibul Haque Chunnu has said that IndustriAll Global Union’s observation on payment of the minimum wage to readymade garment (RMG) factory workers was ‘not correct’.
“Workers of more than 85 percent of the factories are getting the minimum wage,” he told bdnews24.com on Sunday.
IndustriAll Global Union’s General Secretary Jyrki Raina said on Saturday that at least 40 percent of the readymade garment factories in Bangladesh do not pay minimum wages to their workers.
His said this at a press briefing at the end of his two-day visit to Bangladesh.
It was very unfortunate that those factories were yet to pay the minimum wage to the workers, Raina said, adding that his organisation had already discussed the matter with the BGMEA and international buyers.
Mujibul Haque Chunnu promised to look in to the matter if IndustriAll gave him the names of the factories.
“We will verify if the organisation can name the 40 percent factories, according to its claim. The real number is not more than 15 percent,” he said.
The government is in talks with the factories that were yet to pay the minimum wage to the workers, Chunnu said.
He hoped that, by the next two months, those factories, too, would adopt the Wage Board pay package.
The government published the gazette on Dec 5 last year, setting Tk 5,300 as the minimum wage for RMG factory workers effective from the Dec 1, 2013.
Source: UNBconnect
