Survey finds January was the busiest month for Bangladesh apparel workers

Since the starting of the COVID-19 pandemic, January was the busiest month for apparel workers as they spent around 295 hours on average in the factory during the 27 working days in January in 2022, which was close to 11 hours a day.

This was, reportedly, found in the research study of South Asian Network on Economic Modeling (SANEM), which conducted a research project on the quality of life of the apparel workers in collaboration with US-based non-profit organisation Microfinance Opportunities (MFO).

According to the reports, in the survey, around 1,300 apparel workers were covered every week since April 2020 under the project “Garment Worker Diaries” even if these workers were employed in factories spread across the five main RMG industrial hubs of Bangladesh, namely Gazipur, Narayanganj Chittagong, Dhaka and Savar even as three-quarters of the survey respondents were women.

As per the survey finding, workers spent 295 hours on an average in the factory during the 27 working days in January, which is higher than usual even if excluding the one-hour lunch break, the workers worked 268 hours on an average in January, as per the SANEM data.