Woman making Christmas jumpers for UK turns to sex work to pay bills

Every night, Ruby Rafiq* lies awake on the cold, hard floor of her small room, worrying how her family will survive the winter. Curled up next to her under a large patchwork blanket donated by a charity is her 13-year-old daughter, Maya.

The mother of two waits for her children to fall asleep before quietly creeping out of the house. Wrapped in a shawl, she heads to the market down by the Buriganga River in Keraniganj, on the outskirts of Dhaka, and waits for men to approach her.

“They know what you are without you having to say anything,” says Rafiq. “No respectable woman stands around on these streets at night.”

A garment worker by day, the crippling cycle of poverty wages, rising inflation and a cost of living crisis has forced Rafiq into sex work by night.

Things were not always this bad for Rafiq; at first she would skip a meal here and there and pack a little less into Maya’s lunchbox. Then her husband left her and she became the sole provider for her family.

Her son, Sakib, 16, would get hungry and started to steal. Soon she fell behind on her rent and took out a loan, which she struggled to pay back. This past year, her situation has become steadily worse.

Rafiq is just one of four million workers powering Bangladesh’s garment industry; one of the world’s biggest producers of fast fashion. But despite the surge in manufacturing, Bangladesh still has one of the lowest minimum wages in the world, which has remained at 8,000 taka (£57) a month since 2018.

In November, negotiations over a new minimum rate sparked protests across the capital, which quickly turned violent after the government announced an increase to just 12,500 taka a month; far below the 23,000 taka workers say is needed to cover basic living costs and keep their families from starvation.

Last month, Bangladeshi workers making clothes for the UK high street said they had been left to steal and scavenge food from fields to feed their children.

Rafiq works for a large factory that supplies clothes to British brands, including Tesco, Matalan and Next. In the months leading up to Christmas, they have been busy making festive jumpers with “Santa’s Little Helper” sewn across them and a personal favourite of Rafiq’s: the Grinch. She has never seen the film but finds his grinning green face funny.

What is less amusing for Rafiq is that despite working 10-hour shifts, seven days a week, she is still struggling to make ends meet. She earns about £15 a week; less than the retail price of just one of the thousands of jumpers she helps produce. And although the new minimum wage was expected to come into effect in December, it has yet to be paid.

As their situation gets increasingly desperate, workers such as Rafiq find themselves forced to turn to sex work to survive – often at great risk.

A few months ago, a man approached Rafiq and offered her 500 taka – double the amount she is used to for one client. “I accepted thinking I would be able to go home early,” she says. Before she got into the car, Rafiq handed over the cash for safekeeping to a nearby shopkeeper. But when they reached the man’s house, there were 10 others waiting for her.

“I immediately refused but they locked the door behind me,” says Rafiq. “They started to taunt me and I began to cry. Then the man who had brought me there told me to return his money and leave. But I explained that I didn’t have it – that’s when he started to strip me to search for it.

“When he couldn’t find anything, he began beating me violently. He smashed my face against a table and threw me outside, telling me I was good for nothing. I lay on the street bleeding.

“I thought I would die that day,” she says tearfully. “As that monster kicked me, I kept thinking what would happen to my children if I died? Would my daughter end up like me? I can’t imagine anything worse.”

Despite her injuries, Rafiq says she has no option but to continue sex work to supplement her wages. “Everything has got so expensive – even eggs are a luxury now,” she says. “Forget new clothes, I have been wearing this same jumper for the last five years. It used to be a nice yellow – now it’s brown like mud.”

Every day after work, Rafiq desperately waits to see if she can get any overtime shifts. “But it’s not always possible,” she says. “So then I make my way to the bazaar to see if I can pick up any customers.”

Rafiq typically makes about 200 taka from each customer and sees two or three men a day. (The new minimum wage is only 65 taka an hour.) She uses this money to buy food, since most of what she makes at the factory is spent on rent, bills and her children’s education.

“By the time I get home, it’s usually midnight – and I feel physically and mentally exhausted,” says Rafiq. “I don’t know how much more of this my body can take.

“The only thing I look forward to is seeing my children. My daughter Maya wants to be a doctor and dreams of things I can’t even imagine. As a mother, my only real job is to make some of those dreams come true.”

Every night before she goes to sleep, Rafiq gathers some tinder, kindling and wood, and starts a small fire to warm her hands. Sometimes she quietly sings to herself, wondering if those jumpers she made reached their destination.

“If you’re wearing a Christmas jumper that was made in Bangladesh, just know it’s workers like me who make those clothes that bring you such joy,” she says. “But all we get in return is a life of endless misery.

“We are real people, we are not machines – don’t we deserve a little joy too?”

A spokesperson for Tesco says: “Tesco is committed to continuing to support a higher minimum wage that will cover the basic needs of the workers and their families.

“We are committed to responsible purchasing practices and to ensuring that all workers in our supply chain are paid fairly whilst continuing to deliver value for our customers.”

The Gurdian