Underlining that most of the garment factories did not follow the layoff rules, a recent study has revealed more than 3.57 lakh workers of the RMG sector in Bangladesh have lost their jobs amidst the coronavirus pandemic. That’s more than the official figure of 56,372!
The survey was, reportedly, conducted from October to November 2020, on 610 enterprises out of 3,211 listed enterprises, which are, reportedly, located in the four major industrial clusters of Chittagong, Dhaka, Narayanganj and Gazipur.
Titled, ‘Vulnerability, Resilience and Recovery in the RMG Sector in view of Covid Pandemic: Findings from the Enterprise Survey’, the findings of the study which was released recently further, reportedly, maintained that good number of workers were recruited in the sector, but the actual figure could not be deduced while adding the average number of workers in a RMG unit decreased from 886 people in December 2019 to 790 in September 2020.
In his keynote presentation, Research Director at the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), Khondaker Golam Moazzem, reportedly, maintained that amidst the pandemic, most of the garment factories did not follow the layoff rules.
It may be mentioned here that as per the as per MiB database, layoffs were shown to be 2.2 per cent officially even as the survey found the actual percentage to be 13.9 per cent.
