The worst fears of the garment workers in Bangladesh are reportedly coming true!
As per media reports, as the countrywide shutdown in view of the COVID-19 outbreak continues, apparel exporters have started laying off workers, who are engaged in the garment manufacturing units of the country.
The entrepreneurs are allegedly using the Section 20 of Bangladesh Labour Act-2016 – which maintains that any worker may be retrenched from service of any establishment on the ground of redundancy – to terminate the workers.
If the data provided by the Industrial Police is anything to go by, the garment manufacturing hub of Gazipur alone witnessed around 570 workers being terminated from services already.
Two large garment manufacturers have further let go off around 2,700 workers (combined), alleged some labour leaders and workers.
As per an earlier report published by the Penn State University’s Centre for Global Workers’ Rights and the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), the largescale order cancellations by the global buyers had rendered more than a million of workers, employed in thousands of factories in Bangladesh, jobless, being furloughed or put under temporary suspension, already.
