Shipping Minister Shahjahan Khan called for compromise and calm during a meeting with garment factory owners and workers organisations on Monday.
Khan, who has a background in labour politics, described both the labour demands of minimum monthly wage and those offered by the RMG owners as ‘unjust’.
“The workers are asking for Tk 8100 as minimum monthly wage. The owners are offering Tk 3600 per month. Both are not just,” Khan said, hinting at further negotiations needed to strike a middle ground for a settlement.
“Both sides have to compromise,” Khan told journalists after the meeting.
“I am asking the workers to calm down,” he told reporters after the 3-hour long meeting.
” My appeal is on behalf of the government, factory owners and workers. Those who will not comply after this, are not one of us; they are conspirators,” Shahjahan Khan said.
At the meeting, BGMEA’s acting president SA Mannan Kochi asked for additional security to keep factories open.
Garments Workers’ Trade Union leader Montu Ghosh told the meeting the workers are protesting because they want a minimum monthly wage of Tk 8,100.
“However, we had no talks about this with the workers’ leaders. So, the labour organisations can’t be held responsible for this unrest,” Ghosh said.
Ghosh felt ‘political motivations’ might be behind this unrest and spurt in vandalism.
RMG workers at Dhaka, Savar and Gazipur are protesting on the streets for the last three days for a Tk 8,000 minimum wage.
Traffic have been disrupted for about three hours on the Dhaka-Tangail and Dhaka-Mymensingh highway on Monday morning.
Traffic on the Dhaka-Aricha highway traffic also stopped for an hour when workers hit the streets at Savar.
Vehicles were also forced to avoid Dhaka’s Tejgaon area when RMG workers took the streets.
More than 150 factories of Gazipur and Savar had to declare closure on Monday due to the unrest.
At the beginning of the meeting, Shahjahan Khan told the press that ‘a quarter is intentionally fueling this unrest’.
“No worker can damage the factory he works in. No one sets fire to his home.”
Source: Bd news24
