Titled ‘Hunger in the Apparel Supply Chain’, a survey report of the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) released this week has found garment workers’ food security in nine countries including Bangladesh during the coronavirus pandemic has worsened as brands refused to pay factories even as workers are forced to take loans to feed their families due to pay cuts imposed.
Says Strategic Research Director at the WRC, Penelope Kyritsis: “Most workers are currently unable to feed their families adequately and they are bracing themselves for worse times ahead,” while adding that brands need to mobilise funds to sustain garment workers’ incomes through the remainder of the crisis.
As per the survey report, following a 20 per cent decline in average wages in the global garment industry, amongst workers who have held onto their jobs, one in five experience hunger on a daily basis.
One Bangladeshi garment worker who claimed losing her job from a garment manufacturing unit that produces for Target, Walmart and Kmart, reportedly, maintained that she and her family are forced to skip breakfast on a daily basis for the last couple of months while another worker, who is working with another factory that supplies Orsay, reportedly underlined ‘potato is the only vegetable we can afford now’ even as yet another one (who formerly produced apparels for Mango and Primark) reportedly observed that egg is now a luxurious food for a Bangladeshi worker.
Further, the report, which carried out the survey in nine countries – Bangladesh, El Salvador, India, Ethiopia, Cambodia, Haiti, Lesotho, Indonesia and Myanmar – found that three-quarters of the garment workers had to borrow money to buy food this year while underlining how garment workers’ access to food and nutrition has been limited due to job losses or income erosion during the ongoing pandemic.
