Bangladesh has imposed a strict week-long lockdown across the country effective 1 July in what is seen a move to curb spread of COVID-19, cases of which are on the rise lately in what many believe is a new wave of the pandemic.
Owing to the lockdown, public transport is off the road even if the industries and factories have been allowed to operate following health safety guidelines.
So as transport crisis deepened, many garment workers have had to walk to their respective workplaces on the first day of the lockdown in the absence of public transport and the alleged failure of management of many garment factories to make alternative arrangement to ferry the workers.
Media reports maintained this while adding many garment workers working at the manufacturing hubs of Ashulia and Savar suffered immensely due to the transport crisis even as President of the Sammilito Garment Sramik Federation Nazma Akter, who had earlier written to the Secretary of Labour Ministry demanding garment factories arrange their own transports to ferry workers, maintained, “…factories have been kept open but many did not arrange transport for the workers,” and went on to add that on account of the same garment workers had to start walking from early in the morning to report to their respective workplaces.
