No salary paid
Despite an announcement, payments of salaries were not made at fire-devastated Tazreen Fashions Ltd yesterday because the authority was not ready to give what the workers asked for.
The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) wanted to pay them only the salary for the month of November. But the employees demanded an additional three month and 13 days’ salary that they are supposed to get according to a government rule when a company dismisses a worker without a prior notice.
As per an announcement by the garment authorities, nearly 1,500 workers around 8:00am gathered in front of the factory gate.
When Monowar Hossain, assistant commissioner of police (Ashulia and Savar zone), asked them through a loudspeaker of a nearby mosque to go to Tongi College to get the money, workers refused to do so and staged a demonstration, blocking the Dhaka-Tangail highway at Zirabo point in Ashulia.
They later withdrew the blockade around 11:35am.
Earlier, the authority asked the workers to collect their salary yesterday from the factory at Nishchintapur of Ashulia where 111 people were killed in a fire on November 24.
Atiqul Islam, a director of BGMEA, told The Daily Star that they had decided to pay salaries at IRI Centre, an institute of the Department of Labour in Tongi, as the atmosphere in Ashulia was not congenial.
In the face of protest, BGMEA officials held a two-hour-long meeting from 12:45pm at a local school with government high-ups, police officials, the local administration and workers’ leaders to reach a decision on the issue, he said.
After the meeting, Abdul Ahad Ansari, chairman of the standing committee on labour, education and welfare of BGMEA, told reporters that it was not possible to clear the arrears as a list of workers was not available.
Tuba Group that owns the factory claimed it had lost workers’ documents in the fire, Ansari said. Besides, BGMEA needs to prepare a new list to know exactly how many were killed in the deadly fire and who are they.
BGMEA would announce a new date to clear the salaries and other benefits after getting a new list in hand, the chairman said.
No official of Tazreen could be reached over the phone for their comments.
Source: The Daily Star
