Workers employed in at least five garment manufacturing units, including that of Green Sweater Factory, M&W Fashion, Bindu Fashion, Eva Fashion and Bay Footwear, hit the streets on Wednesday to demand release of their due wages while also expressing concerns over safety measures put in place by their respective factories in view of the COVID-19 outbreak.
As per reports, the workers of the above-mentioned factories assembled at Signboard, Mouchak, and Kunia of Gazipur and blocked the Dhaka-Mymensingh highway.
The workers of M&W Fashion maintained not receiving their wages for the last 3 months while those of Green Sweater Factory underlined that had also not been paid for February. The workers also levelled allegations against the management of not maintaining proper safety measures thereby exposing them to chances of getting infected by the dreaded coronavirus.
Meanwhile, as per officials of Eva Fashion, a certain number of workers abstained from work on what they call false allegations of due wages, which hit the production thereby forcing the authorities to down shutters in line with the labour laws.
As tensions grew, the police intervened to diffuse the situation and resorted to lobbing tear gas shells to disperse the agitating workers.
It may be mentioned here that lately reports are doing rounds on increasing number of coronavirus cases amongst garment workers. Around last week or so, seven garment workers in Savar were reportedly found COVID positive, before which four more workers reportedly tested positive for COVID-19 in Rangpur, Jashore, Chittagong and Pirojpur.
